How is it possible to die because of inhaling high percentage of oxygen, when it is required by our body?
462982
Pulmonary Oxygen Toxicity occurs when a person is exposed to high oxygen levels for over 16 hours in pressures of 0.5 bar or more. It occurs in progressive, overlapping phases. During the first phase, fluid floods into the tissues of the lung that are normally filled with air. Bleeding then occurs between the alveoli, destroying capillaries and epithelial cells. Tissues begin producing in an attempt to heal the area. This causes thickening and scarring of the lungs. \nSymptoms begin with a substernal irritation that becomes progressively worse and is accompanied by an increasingly uncontrollable cough. The patient may experience tracheal or bronchial burning, that worsens during inspiration. Lung damage is sometimes irreversible.
958887
Lavender gave you the key information you need, i.e., too much oxygen damages the body. Probably the best-known example of this is blindness in prematurely born infants due to breathing pure oxygen for extended periods (which is sometimes necessary to keep them alive). There are probably medical techniques available today to minimize this problem, but it has been a serious issue in past years (20 years ago in one example I am familiar with).\n\nHere is a bit more information about breathing pure oxygen, and some clarification of the comments from others.\n\nYou can breathe pure oxygen for short periods in order to recover from lack of oxygen (athletes do it, as do firemen who have inhaled smoke, for example).\n\nThe air we breathe at sea level is at a pressure of 14.7 psi, and 21% of it is oxygen. (78% is nitrogen, and most of the other 1% is argon.) If you take 21% of 14.7psi, you'll see that we are breathing oxygen at a pressure of about 3 psi.\n\nPilots and astronauts can breathe pure oxygen, but as Lavender points out, they breathe oxygen at a pressure lower than sea level air pressure. If their oxygen is delivered to them at 3 psi, then it is equivalent to the oxygen in our air at sea level. (And incidentally, the air we breathe is not much changed at elevations up to 5,000 or 10,000 feet. As a rule of thumb, you can notice the difference in air pressure (the difference in the availability of oxygen) when you get close to 10,000 feet of elevation. At 18,000 feet, the air pressure is about 50% of that at sea level. And after another 18,000 feet, the pressure at 36,000 feet is cut in half again, so it is about 25% of the sea level pressure.)
374341
because without air we all die ? ?
455306
Oxygen, like a lot of substances our body needs, can be harmful in large quantities.  This is partly due to its highly electromagnetic and hydrophyllic nature.  As any patient that has been on oxygen therapy can tell you, your body is "set" to use a certain percentage of oxygen in the air we breathe.  If we get used to a higher amount, and then this amount is depreived, we feel light-headed and weak.  This is because at higher levels of oxygen, our lungs become accustomed to a smaller amount of effort to extract and use the oxygen from the air.  \n\nOxygen's corrosive nature is not found in the O2 form however, but the O and O3 (ozone) forms.  This is because oxygen is most stable in the O2 form.  This is where oxygen "wants" to be.  The O3 and O forms are unstable, and prone to reactions.    \n\n"Oxygen can be toxic at elevated partial pressures (i.e. high relative concentrations). This is important in some forms of scuba diving, such as with a rebreather.\n\nCertain derivatives of oxygen, such as ozone (O3), singlet oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl radicals and superoxide, are also highly toxic. The body has developed mechanisms to protect against these toxic compounds. For instance, the naturally-occurring glutathione can act as an antioxidant, as can bilirubin which is normally a breakdown product of hemoglobin. To protect against the destructive nature of peroxides, nearly every organism on earth has developed some form of the enzyme catalase, which very quickly disproportionates peroxide into water and dioxygen.\n\nHighly concentrated sources of oxygen promote rapid combustion and therefore are fire and explosion hazards in the presence of fuels. The fire that killed the Apollo 1 crew on a test launchpad spread so rapidly because the capsule was pressurized with pure oxygen as would be usual in an actual flight, but to maintain positive pressure in the capsule, this was at slightly more than atmospheric pressure instead of the 1/3 pressure that would be used in flight. (See partial pressure.) Similar hazards also apply to compounds of oxygen with a high oxidative potential, such as chlorates, perchlorates, and dichromates; they also can often cause chemical burns.\n\nOxygen derivatives are prone to form free radicals, especially in metabolic processes. Because they can cause severe damage to cells and their DNA, they form part of theories of carcinogenesis and aging." (Wikipedia 2006)\n\n"Oxygen is the most abundant element on this planet. The earth's crust is 46.6% oxygen by weight, the oceans are 86% oxygen by weight, and the atmosphere is 21% oxygen by volume. The name oxygen comes from the Greek stems oxys, "acid," and gennan, "to form or generate." Thus, oxygen literally means "acid former." This name was introduced by Lavoisier, who noticed that compounds rich in oxygen, such as SO2 and P4O10, dissolve in water to give acids.\n\n"Fluorine is the only element that is more electronegative than oxygen. As a result, oxygen gains electrons in virtually all its chemical reactions. Each O2 molecule must gain four electrons to satisfy the octets of the two oxygen atoms." ("Chemistry of Oxygen" - Bodner Research Group)
136486
Oxygen is the only gas we really need to breathe in order to stay alive. If we don't breathe oxygen (or if we don't breathe enough oxygen), we soon die. Interestingly enough, too much oxygen can be a bad thing also. At right is a diagram illustrating the range of oxygen concentrations that we can breathe safely. The green and red bar represents a scale of inspired oxygen partial pressures (PO2), ranging from zero oxygen on the left, to a PO2 of 2.0 ATA on the right. Through evolution, our bodies have become optimized to breathe oxygen at a partial pressure (PO2) of 0.21 ATA. If the inspired PO2 is much less than this, our bodies begin to shut down -- leading to unconsciousness when the PO2 drops below about 0.1 ATA (i.e., 10% oxygen at sea level). This is called hypoxia. Breathing more than 0.21 ATA oxygen is generally fine ... up to a point. If the inspired PO2 is maintained above about 0.5 ATA for prolonged periods of time (many hours to days), people begin to suffer what is usually referred to as "pulmonary" or "chronic" oxygen toxicity. The effects of this include a burning sensation or irritation in the lungs, and can affect breathing. Except for people who spend days under pressure at a time (e.g., commercial divers on oil rigs), this form of oxygen toxicity is not much of a problem for divers.\n\nHowever, as the inspired PO2 starts to climb above about 1.2 to 1.4 ATA, another kind of oxygen toxicity, called "CNS" (for "Central Nervous System") or "acute" oxygen toxicity, becomes a significant problem. Although a variety of subtle symptoms such as muscular twitching in the face and tunnel vision have been attributed to this kind of oxygen toxicity, the really important symptom is severe, uncontrolled convulsions. Although these convulsions do not appear to cause any sort of permanent damage by themselves, the problem of a diver experiencing such convulsions being able continue to hold a regulator in his or her mouth is obvious. More than a few divers have drowned underwater, apparently a result of oxygen-induced convulsions. This is perhaps the most serious and insidious of diving maladies, because it comes on unpredictably and without warning, and usually results in the death of the afflicted diver.\n\nThere is no clear understanding on the exact biochemical processes involved with CNS oxygen toxicity, nor is there a clear consensus on what the "safe" upper PO2 limit should be. Convulsions have occurred in divers breathing an inspired PO2 as low as 1.2 ATA, but such cases usually involve extenuating circumstances (such as medical conditions in the divers which pre-dispose them to convulsions). Conversely, commercial divers in Europe have routinely breathed oxygen partial pressures as high as 1.9 ATA in the water, and hyperbaric chamber facilities regularly expose patients to 2.8 ATA of oxygen (or more) without difficulty. Amid the ambiguities, two trends seem very consistent. The first is that high levels of exercise (perhaps more specifically, high levels of CO2 in the blood) appear to increase the probability of suffering from a convulsion. Secondly, divers immersed in water have a lower tolerance to elevated concentrations of inspired oxygen than do divers kept dry in a hyperbaric chamber or undersea habitat. (this over and above the fact that divers in a dry habitat are much more likely to survive a convulsion than are divers immersed in water). Another unavoidable reality regarding oxygen toxicity is the extreme range of variation both between individuals, and within a single individual.\n\nWhen immersed underwater, most divers regard a PO2 of 1.4 ATA as a safe upper limit during periods of physical exertion, and 1.6 ATA during periods of rest.
804239
You mean there is a good way to die??!! Is that an oxymoron? I noticed that the concensus is " In your sleep". Actually I think a lethal arrythmia would be my guess, you know something like V-tach or  V-fib. You would  just pass out and never wake up.
1109852
On June 3, the bodies of two college students were found in a giant helium balloon in Florida. The week before, a 10-year-old in New Jersey collapsed at a birthday party after sucking helium from a balloon. Is helium really that dangerous?\n\nIt can be. Breathing in pure helium deprives the body of oxygen, as if you were holding your breath. If you couldn't breathe at all, you'd start to die in minutes—as soon as your body exhausted the supply of oxygen stored in the blood. But helium speeds up this process: When the gas fills your lungs, it creates a diffusion gradient that washes out the oxygen. In other words, each breath of helium you take sucks more oxygen out of your system. After inhaling helium, the body's oxygen level can plummet to a hazardous level in a matter of seconds.\n\nYou don't have to worry about fatal asphyxiation if you're sucking from a helium balloon at a party. At worst you'll keep going until you get lightheaded and pass out—at which point you'll stop inhaling helium and your body's oxygen levels will return to normal. Of more concern is the possibility that you'll hurt yourself when you fall down. (The boy in New Jersey bumped his head and needed three stitches.) It's far more dangerous to suck helium out of a pressurized tank: If the gas comes in too quickly, your lungs might burst and hemorrhage.\n\nOf course you're putting yourself in grave danger anytime you climb inside a giant helium balloon. The college kids in Florida weren't the first to attempt this stunt. In 2002, a case report from a Japanese medical journal described a similar episode: A drunken adolescent poked his head into an advertising balloon and asphyxiated. Several authors have also reported cases of suicide by helium inhalation. \n\nDeath by helium still seems to be quite rare. U.S. Poison Control Centers reported only two fatalities between 2000 and 2004. There's still an outcry from concerned parents whenever helium inhalation makes its way into popular culture. Federal Express had to pull a commercial that depicted the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz sucking balloons to keep their voices at a high pitch. Geoffrey, the Toys "R" Us giraffe, got a slap on the hoof for doing the same. \n\nAt the same time, doctors use a mixture of helium and oxygen (called "heliox") to help patients with upper-respiratory blockages. The treatment works because the helium is a very light gas, and it's easier to push it through an obstructed airway. (We get funny voices when we inhale helium because the lighter gas changes the resonant frequencies of our vocal tract.*)
899296
We don't breathe oxygen...we breathe a mixture of mostly nitrogen.\n\nThe air we breathe is made up of significant quantities of four gases:\n\n   1. Nitrogen (78%)\n   2. Oxygen (21%)\n   3. Argon (0.94%)\n   4. Carbon dioxide (0.04%) \n\nWhen we breathe in air, our bodies consume its oxygen and convert it to carbon dioxide. Exhaled air contains about 4.5-percent carbon dioxide. Our bodies do not do anything with nitrogen or argon.
164984
Yes, but not for long. The person will pass out after a couple of breaths because of hyperoxia (too much oxygen in blood) and subsequent alkalosis (elevation of blood pH because of loss of CO2). You can achieve a similar effect by hyperventilating: taking fast and deep breaths for a minute or two - you will become dizzy and will faint if you don't stop (do NOT do it! ;)).\nBTW, oxygen tanks used as breathing aids are not 100% oxygen, far from that.
650148
What you might do if you are seriously hurting is to refuse medical care except for anti-pain meds for any pain you are having.  That is not the same thing as suicide.  Its what Art Buchwald did.  Except that he got better instead of worse.\n\nI can name several people with emphysema that simply turned off their oxygen for the night and died.  They could still breathe, but they just didn't get pure O2.
473204
People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) should not be given large doses of Oxygen because they rely on the build-up of CO2 to give them the drive to breathe. Giving them too much O2 can knock out their drive to breathe.
1150092
When you hyperventilate, you breathe out excess carbon dioxide.\n\nWhen you breath out excess carbon dioxide, the pH of your blood gets affected (it becomes more basic).\n\nBy breathing into a paper bag, you breath the lost carbon dioxide back into your system, thus preventing a severe disruption in your blood's pH.\n\n-random physician
796649
If you have ever exercised to the point of getting totally out of breath, you have felt the effects of attempting to respire without oxygen. The pain in your mucles is from lactic acid, the end stage of anaerobic respiration. \n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_Respiration
292621
It is due to natural selection. Those of us who can breath oxygen without suffocating survive and those who can't die.
683788
If you mean breathing nitrogen, nothing as long as there is some oxygen mixed, if you dive deeply nitrogen can dissolve in your blood and make little bubbles when return to the surface and it can be mortal\n\nIf you mean nitrogen in nutrition, it's very important in forming proteins, if it lacks can cases lack of proteins, and if you receive too much it can leads to suffering from exceeding of uric acid.
198755
lack of oxygen causes this
1026062
you would probably suffocate from the high altitute b-cuz there isnt much oxygen up there.