If air is made up of 78% Nitrogen, our blood uses Oxygen and we exhale Carbon dioxide, what happens to nitrogen?

Question

If air is made up of 78% Nitrogen, our blood uses Oxygen and we exhale Carbon dioxide, what happens to nitrogen?

In: Biology

Answer 1

So now you know that nitrogen is pretty much inert when we breathe it, but at high pressures it can enter the blood stream, causing us very little harm.

Deep sea divers are subject to such high pressures and therefore their lungs take in some of the nitrogen. When they decompress they must do so gradually so the absorbed nitrogen has time to exit the blood stream via the lungs. If decompression happens to quickly the absorbed nitrogen in the blood will evaporate into air bubbles and kill the diver, a process known as The Benz.

A neat way to combat this is to replace the nitrogen with helium, another inert gas. At high pressure the blood cannot absorb it so the divers don’t need to worry about rapid decompression.