Oxygen takes up just over 20% of our atmosphere, and the rest is mainly Nitrogen. It’s no secret that you need oxygen. It allows us to breathe, and it’s responsible for all forms of life. If there were no oxygen in the atmosphere, everything would die, including you!
But, what would happen if the atmosphere was nothing but oxygen? At first, it might sound like a good thing. Oxygen is what helps us to live and gives our bodies energy. More of it has to be a good thing right? There are even bars all around the world that offer hits of 95% oxygen. These services claim number of things from making you more productive at work, to being able to cure hangover. If you were able to breathe 100% oxygen all the time, would it make you extremely energetic superhuman version of yourself? Nope! Not at all. Too much oxygen is actually a bad thing. At a certain point, it can be downright poisonous for humans. If you breathe in too much pure oxygen too fast it creates free radicals.
Free radicals are unstable atoms that damage cells and they’re linked to variety of diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s. They’re also thought to be linked to things like wrinkles and grey hair also. If you’re able to survive an extended period of time with pure oxygen in the atmosphere, we’d most likely appear much older.
But that could only happen if we evolved and adapted to live in an oxygen only atmosphere. If it happened instantly, your chest would be hurting each time you took a deep breath. Fluid would accumulate in your lungs and you’ll start to become dizzy and lightheaded. As you kept breathing, your lungs would begin to get damaged and so would your brain until you lost consciousness and died.
If there were so many oxygen in the atmosphere, the insects trachea would expand and their bodies would get bigger. If you happened to survive long enough to light a match, you wouldn’t last too long after that. As soon as you brought your flame to something. It would instantly catch fire in a massive explosion.
Oxygen is a key ingredient to what makes a fire spread and expand. If we only had oxygen in our atmosphere. Our fire would become massive. What used to be a small campfire would be a fiery explosion. So, if you could breathe in an atmosphere of pure oxygen, the giant insects and the Earth burning all around you would make life pretty tough, even impossible. The only way to survive would be to adapt and to make sure fires never happened. And what would life be without fire?? That’ll be another story for another day.
Scientists Arena 