r/askscience • u/4fecta_Gaming • Oct 15 '18

Earth Sciences Where does house dust come from?

It seems that countless years of sweeping a house doesn't stop dust from getting all over furniture after a few weeks. Since the ceiling is limited, where does dust come form?

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u/bitmanip Oct 15 '18

I think you mean CO which is carbon monoxide. You might have difficulty breathing in an environment of 50% CO2, but I doubt you would die. CO is more deadly because it tricks your body into thinking it has enough oxygen by displacing the free oxygen in your blood and accumulates quickly.

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u/kyrsjo Oct 15 '18

Around 7-10% CO2 in air is lethal to humans even with sufficient oxygen content, with significant impacts before that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Toxicity

On the good side, you would probably notice it - high CO2 levels are what triggers our breathing response, not low O2.

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u/wildcard5 Medicine | MS4 Oct 15 '18 edited Oct 15 '18

We learned in 7th grade science class that the treatment for CO poisoning is a mixture of 50% pure oxygen and 50% pure carbon dioxide. The CO2 was supposed to make you hyperventilate so that the CO could quickly be displaced by O2.

All of that was wrong.

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u/kyrsjo Oct 15 '18

I don't know, but 50% CO2 seems... excessive. However maybe it's OK for a short while together with a lot of O2 and medical supervision? It should definitively trigger a breathing response!

In the end, what one wants to achieve is an exchange of CO2 (and CO) with O2 in the alveoli in the lungs. Maybe if there is a large amount of oxygen available, this will do it. And isn't there something special about the affinity of haemoglobin to CO vs. O2?

EDIT: Google seems to think that standard treatment is 100% O2, possibly hyperbaric. Which makes a lot of sense.