• Question: Do think that humans are actually allergic to Oxygen and it just takes us 70-90 years to be affected by it?

    Asked by Mia Burns to Hannah, Lucy, Phil, rochellevelho, Stephen on 14 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Hannah Sargeant

      Hannah Sargeant answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      Thankfully we really understand how our bodies use oxygen and how it makes our muscles work. We also know that when we take oxygen away, our bodies die in minutes. Finally, if we are allergic to something, our bodies react in a certain way, just like people who are allergic to nuts. We would get a rash and our throats would swell. So we are pretty confident in saying that we are not allergic to oxygen 🙂

    • Photo: Phil Sutton

      Phil Sutton answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      As Hannah says really. Normally if we have an allergy our bodies own immune systems actually go into over drive and cause us harm. It isn’t the substance itself that sometimes causes the reaction but the bodies response to it that does the damage. This is the body falsely attacking something none threatening.

    • Photo: Stephen Pulker

      Stephen Pulker answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      Not allergic. But . . . there is a theory that oxygen does damage our bodies; lone oxygen ions (that are unattached to other elements and exist everywhere in the air) can attach to bits of our body and damage it due to its high reactivity. Because the numbers of free oxygen ions are small (relatively) the body has time to repair itself, but as the body gets worse at repairing itself the damage becomes more obvious . . . aging. Not sure how reputable this theory is though so don’t take it too seriously without doing a bit more research.

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