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Each weekday Marshall Brain answers questions submitted by the readers of How Stuff Works in the Question of the Day section of HSW. You can also view previously answered questions in the HSW Question Archive. Here is today's question!

Question

How much oxygen does a person consume in a day?

Answer

The average adult at rest inhales and exhales something like 7 or 8 liters of air per minute (about 1/4 cubic feet). During a day that totals something like 11,000 liters (2,800 cubic feet). The air that is inhaled is about 20% oxygen, and the air that is exhaled is about 15% oxygen, so about 5% of the volume of air is consumed in each breath and converted to carbon dioxide. Therefore a human being uses about 550 liters of pure oxygen per day (150 cubic feet).

A person who is exercising obviously uses a lot more oxygen than that. You could determine how much air is moving through your lungs by exhaling into a platic bag of known volume at each breath and seeing how long it takes to fill the bag.

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