How much air approximately will your lungs inhale over your lifetime?

Answer 1

This really depends on how active you are, but for argument's sake lets say we're talking about an average male that doesn't do anything but relax. On average, an adult male has a total lung capacity of 5.7L, however there is air left at the bottom of the lungs that you can never breathe out fully (required to prevent alveoli collapse). This value is about 1.2L. Therefore, we have another 4.5L available to be filled. However, when we are breathing everyday, we only have a "tidal volume" of air that is exchanged every breath of about 500mL (not taking into account large breaths where the entire lungs are filled to 5.7L). As I said, it's hard to say what each person does, so we'll just use 500mL. Next thing to consider is that the average male will take 12 breaths/minute at rest and so the average pulmonary ventilation is 6L/minutes. Therefore over an average of around 85yrs, the average male (if he only rested) would inhale no less than 268,239,600L of air. Of course the actual figure would be far greater, because any physical activity will increase breaths/minute and the amount of air inhaled per breath.