I take a lot of hot showers, and sometimes I find myself wondering why I am able to breathe in the steam around me and not worry about any water-in-lungs related health concerns. How is breathing in steam different than breathing in small amounts of water droplets?
In: 6500
Your lungs, like every part of your body, already have lots of water. In fact the blood vessels in your lungs, which are there to absorb O2 and excrete CO2, work best when they are covered in a thin layer of water.
There is almost always water in the air you breathe. There is water in the air you breathe in and in the air you breathe out. Normally there is a bit more in the air your breathe out, meaning that most of the time breathing causes a slight net loss of water.
The situation you described, breathing while you’re in a warm wet shower, is one of the few situations in which you’re likely breathing in more water than you are breathing out. Still, each breath adds a small amount of water compared to what’s already there. Your lungs have been evolving to carefully manage their water content for literally hundreds of millions of years. They can handle a bit extra from the moist air of your shower quite easily.
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