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Blood has a chemical in it called hemoglobin, attached to the red blood cells. Certain molecules, including oxygen, are react quite strongly with hemoglobin.

The lungs end in tiny little bubble-like membranes called alveoli. These are surrounded by tiny blood vessels called capillaries, which connect the pulmonary artery and pulmonary vein. (These carry unoxygenated blood from heart to lungs, and oxygenated blood back into the heart, respectively.) The membranes are permeable to both carbon dioxide and oxygen. Carbon dioxide gets released into the air within the alveoli (after being produced in individual cells and collected in the rest of the circulatory system), while oxygen slips over from the air into the blood and reacts with the hemoglobin. From there, it's carried back to your heart, and then out to the rest of the body to be used in cellular respiration (the most fundamental function of cells; essentially the power plant for the cell)

(The other noteworthy chemical that reacts with hemoglobin similarly is carbon monoxide, an odorless gas. It attaches to hemoglobin so strongly that the body can't remove it (there's some kind of reaction at the other end that makes hemoglobin release oxygen - it doesn't work with carbon monoxide). If you breathe in too much, all of your blood has carbon monoxide attached, and you effectively suffocate. The only way you can tell its happening is that you begin to feel inexplicably tired.)

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13y ago

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