If our body needs oxygen in the air to live. then what the 77% of nitrogen do to our body?

Question

as I was told from early education that the air we currently breathe in contains 21% oxygen and 77-ish% of nitrogen and the rest are other particles.

So I have a dumb question on what the body uses nitrogen we breathe in for?

In: 387

Answer 1

basically nothing, its just there, we didn’t create the atmosphere, we just use bits of it

HOWEVER, pure oxygen tends to cause things to catch fire all on their own. (This includes little things like your lunges) so it is quite convenient we only have 21% O2 and not 100%