26Lungs
Humans have odor receptors in the lung.
27. When you are born and take your first breath, the pressure change in your lungs causes a valve between the two atria in your heart to close and eventually fuse. When this doesn’t happen correctly a baby can have a hole in their heart, but initially everyone had the same hole.
28. Before the invention of the heart-lung machine, surgeons used “cross circulation” for open heart surgeries. A child was connected to their parent’s heart, which oxygenated the patient’s blood and pumped it back in.
29. You can’t breathe while pooping because your epiglottis closes and you use the air pressure in your lung to push out the waste.
30. The total surface area of all the alveoli in your lungs is about the size of a tennis court.
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31Pneumothorax
Tall thin males are at a much higher risk of spontaneous pneumothorax or sudden collapse of a lung.
32. Corexit, the chemical dispersant used to “clean” the BP oil spill, is known to have high levels of toxicity in humans, with known links to lung damage, cancer, and other chemical poisoning effects. Corexit is still the go-to chemical for oil spills with no policies banning it in the US.
33. It’s possible to die from Secondary Drowning. After someone comes close to drowning, the fluid trapped in their lungs can kill them hours later.
34. Armstrong’s Limit is the altitude above which no human can survive without pressurization, even if using an oxygen mask. Water in the lungs will boil at body temperature, due to the reduced pressure. Above Earth, this begins 18–19 km (60,000–60,000 ft) above sea level.
35. Common vaccines used on “hundreds of millions of people” were developed from lung tissue cells of a 3-month-old female human fetus aborted in Sweden in 1962. It’s not clear if the mother gave her permission.
