Oxygen Bar "FAQs" Might not be so acurate
August 9th, 2008
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Oxygen Bars have been discussed here before, I found some interesting information on a “FAQ’s” page for an oxygen bar provider.
This site has a number of questionable statements such as:
-Research has demonstrated that our vital lung capacity decreases 5% with every decade of life. This lung elasticity means less oxygen.
-Blood is the liquid carrier of oxygen that fuels all systems, stimulates chemical reactions and cleans itself of waste and toxins.
-By mass, oxygen makes up 90% of the water molecule; water makes up 65%-75% of the human body.
-The brain, which makes up 2% of our total mass, and requires 20% of the body’s oxygen needs.
-Almost all cancerous beginnings are due to lack of cell oxygenation.
-Cancer attacks every organ in our body, except the heart because of its abnormal supply of oxygen
Hmm. I’m not so sure about some of this. For one thing, there is a such thing as cardiac cancer, although it’s rare. The fact that the heart is a muscle may have more to do with it, since muscle tissue is less prone to cancer than other kinds. Lung cancer is certainly common and the lungs would have even more oxygen avaliable than the heart. Aside from that, the idea that cancer is due to a lack of cell oxygen is false. In fact, cancer may sometimes be related to damage from oxygen (remember how you always hear about how antioxidant vitamins are good for you?) Oxygen doesn’t actually have much to do with the direct reactions to remove “toxins” – whatever the hell those might be.
But there are a few statements I like even more:
-Lack of oxygen in our universe is due to pollution, burning of fossil fuels and overall destruction of the ozone layer.
What the hell? In “our universe.” No, I don’t think so! Fossil fuel burning does not change much of anything outside of the earth, let alone beyond our local galaxy cluster. Even on earth, burning of fossil fuels has resulted in a negligible consumption of oxygen. It may have released CO2 to the point of causing measurable change, but reducing oxygen? Not so much. And as for the ozone layer, well the Ozone layer is made up of oxygen, but in a different molecular type: O3. O2 is the breathable variety of oxygen and while O3 is beneficial in blocking UV rays in the upper atmosphere, it’s not anything you want in your lungs. Thus the reduction in the ozone layer would actually produce MORE O2 since that is what O3 decomposes to.
-Less than 200 years ago the earth’s atmosphere comprised of 40% oxygen; today we breathe only 21%
Wow! Nearly twice as high an atmospheric concentration of oxygen only two centuries ago? Damn. That really changes the way we think of pre-19th century history. (or at least it would if it were true, which it isn’t)
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Not Even Wrong, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 9th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Love the illustration
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August 10th, 2008 at 12:26 am
That is a great graphic
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August 10th, 2008 at 12:35 am
I was under the impression that one of the major causes of cancer was free radicals produced by oxygen metabolism.
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August 10th, 2008 at 3:06 am
Soylent said:
Yes I believe that is why the antioxidents are considered good for keeping your cells in good shape. Oxygen is obviously an oxidizer and the free radicals which are an intermediate of metabolism of oxygen are even nastier. It has been hypothysized that a large amount of the ware and tear on our cells that degrades them over our lifetime is due to this and that would sometimes lead to cancer.
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August 10th, 2008 at 6:49 am
Now we know why we don’t see large fires destroying whole cities. It isn’t because of ameliorated fire fighting, but because of the enriched oxygen atmosphere.
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August 10th, 2008 at 11:43 am
At an oxygen level of 35%, spontaneous ignition of even moist twigs would be common, and little of the land-based biota would survive the bushfires.
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August 10th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Oxygen levels in the mid permian is believed to have been upwards of 30% based on fossil evidence(leaf pores in gingko). Coincidentally this was followed by the permian-triassic extinction, also known as the great dying; Earths largest ever extinction. Oxygen levels dropped to just 12% in 20 million years.
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August 11th, 2008 at 2:32 am
I thought it was the Carboniferous period which had elevated oxygen levels.
And wasn’t the Permian-Triassic extinction caused by massive global warming due to large-scale vulcanism?
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August 11th, 2008 at 10:39 am
George Carty said:
It lasted to about the mid Permian before it went in steep decline.
George Carty said:
Oh, there’s a buffét of nasty things which are suspected with varying degrees of confidence. It seems that some mix of nasty things occur, such as intense vulcanism with subseqent global warming, asteroid impact, methane release from chlathrates(possibly triggered by volcanism, asteroid impact or subsequent warming) or an anoxic event(possibly triggered by warming or continental drift shutting down the thermohaline circulation or some kind of intense release of nutrients like what causes the anoxic “dead-zone” in the gulf of mexico), short term global cooling due to enormous quantities of sulfur aerosols and dust particles from a single volcanic or impact event (e.g. the siberian traps(transliteration from the swedish word for stair) erruption, which flooded an area the size of Europe with molten basalt) etc.
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August 11th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Soylent said:
30% oxygen at sea level would be high enough above the current levels of around 21% to make a pretty noticable difference, although it would not be as dramatic as the 40% level which apparently occurred around the Reign of King George III, the American Revolution and the campaigns of Napoleon. It’s amazing I never learned anything in history class about this. I would have expected that it would have effected a lot of things to have stuff erupting into explosive combustion every time someone struck a match.
But seriously… it seems to me like it would be hard for the oxygen levels in the atmosphere to go up much higher than 30%, give or take a few, because when you get to levels that high it will start to have some pretty dramatic increases in combustibility as well as the growth of oxygen consuming lifeforms, especially microbes. It seems to me like the levels of increased reactivity that you’d get in that rich of an atmosphere would bring the levels down relatively quickly.
I could be wrong though. One thing is for sure. It does not take an increase in the oxygen density of air by all that much to produce acute increases in reactivity.
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September 20th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I don’t get it. Is the picture supposed to be funny? Those look like candles but is it supposed to be like fireworks or something maybe because I do not get it.
Oxygen is obviously very good for you and all nutrition is based on just trying to make it so you could get more oxygen to your body so getting more pure oxygen will certainly help with anything that is causing problems. More oxygen always means more health and better levels energy and no illness.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 7:04 pm
What does water have to do with anything?
Yeah, water and oxygen are both important, but they’re totally different molecules. My body isn’t converting hydrogen and oxygen into water.
****, if I needed water, I’d just drink some! Oxygen’s expensive!
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October 2nd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Bunnay said:
The pipe and candles are burning explosively because the air has too much oxygen in it XD
My friend thinks oxygen burns, though, so you’re lucky the whole atmosphere hasn’t kerploded!!
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October 3rd, 2008 at 11:05 am
Bunnay said:
Oxygen is an oxidator. Oxidators damage cells (that’s the reason for muscular fatigue, by the way). Therefore, more oxygen is not automatically a Good Thing.
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