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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Our lungs operate on the principle of equilibrium. Through various membranes, your blood is “exposed” to the air and the gasses in your blood and in the air equalize. So if there is more gas in one than the other, that gas moves from the fluid that has it in excess to the fluid that is lacking it.
The blood that is passing through your lungs is blood that has expended all of its oxygen (and therefore lacks it) and has collected a lot of CO2 (and therefore has it in excess). When it is exposed to the air in your lungs, the excess O2 in the air gets absorbed by the blood and the excess CO2 in your blood gets absorbed by the air.
The other gasses in the air (primarily nitrogen) are essentially inert. So while your blood can absorb these gasses based on the same principles, it doesn’t do anything with them in a biochemical sense so those gases just reach an equilibrium point and stay there.
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