NAUTIL.US
Oxygen: Your leafy breath
The oxygen in your lungs and bloodstream 1s a highly reactive waste product generated by vegetation and microbes. Trees, herbs, algae, and blue-green bacte- ria split oxygen atoms out of water molecules during photosynthesis. They use most of the resultant gas for their own purposes, but thankfully some leaks out to sustain you. In fact it makes up about a fifth of the air you breathe. Your cells harness oxygen to release energy from chemical bonds 1n the food you consume.
TEXT SETS
Oxygen absorbs electrons released by broken food molecules, which attract hydrogen ions, resulting in a molecular waste of your own making: metabolic water, which comprises one tenth of your body fluids. An average adult carries between 8 and 10 pounds of homemade wastewater within them, and 1 in 10 of your tears are the metabolic by-products of your breathing and eating.
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