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The diffusion capacity for oxygen () is the proportionality factor relating the rate of oxygen uptake into the lung to the oxygen gradient between the capillary blood and the alveoli (per Fick's laws of diffusion).
This blood–air barrier is extremely thin (approximately 600 nm-2μm; in some places merely 200 nm) to allow sufficient oxygen diffusion, yet it is extremely strong. This strength comes from the type IV collagen in between the endothelial and epithelial cells. Damage can occur to this barrier at a pressure difference of around 40 millimetres ...
Oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide at the blood–air barrier between the alveolar air and the pulmonary capillary. [2] Alveoli make up the functional tissue of the mammalian lungs known as the lung parenchyma, which takes up 90 percent of the total lung volume. [3] [4]
All aerobic creatures need oxygen for cellular respiration, which extracts energy from the reaction of oxygen with molecules derived from food and produces carbon dioxide as a waste product. Breathing, or external respiration, brings air into the lungs where gas exchange takes place in the alveoli through diffusion.
Therefore, oxygen has a diffusion rate in air 10,000 times greater than in water. [23] The use of sac-like lungs to remove oxygen from water would therefore not be efficient enough to sustain life. [23] Rather than using lungs, gaseous exchange takes place across the surface of highly vascularized gills.
The lungs together weigh approximately 1.3 kilograms (2.9 lb), and the right is heavier. The lungs are part of the lower respiratory tract that begins at the trachea and branches into the bronchi and bronchioles, which receive air breathed in via the conducting zone. These divide until air reaches microscopic alveoli, where gas exchange takes ...
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