How does the lungs know which is O2 and CO2? We breathe a ton of different gasses daily but what happens to the other gases other than O2 and CO2 when inhaled?
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The lungs don’t really know, but your blood knows. At an atomic level, it wants to grab onto oxygen more than anything else, so as it passes through the lungs, it grabs as much oxygen as it can and loses the co2 and other waste products it picked up throughout the body.
I think you could compare it to a conveyor belt running buy a load of scrap metal with magnets. anything with iron in it is going to catch while the rest will be left there.
So your lungs bring in everything, O2 CO2, smoke, dust, germs, etc. Then they provide a massive amount of surface area for your blood to interface with what they bring in. This is one reason it’s important to be careful about what you’re breathing in. If they get stuck in the lungs, you can end up with scar tissue or otherwise damaged tissue which reduces the surface area your blood can take oxygen from, which makes it harder to get O2 from the atmosphere into your bloodstream.
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