{"id":774269,"date":"2026-07-20T17:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T17:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/774269\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T17:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T17:42:09","slug":"co2-in-human-blood-is-rising-with-the-atmosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/774269\/","title":{"rendered":"CO2 in human blood is rising with the atmosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For most of human evolution, the air held about 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide. It has now surpassed 420 and is climbing by more than 2 ppm per year. A new <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11869-026-01918-5\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">open-access study in Air Quality, Atmosphere &amp; Health<\/a> argues that shift may already be showing up in our blood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alexander Larcombe and Phil Bierwirth mined U.S. health-survey data covering about 7,000 people per round from 1999 to 2020. Average blood bicarbonate \u2014 the compound that carries CO2 out of the body \u2014 rose about 7%, closely tracking atmospheric CO2. Calcium and phosphorus, minerals bound up in the same acid-buffering chemistry, both fell. Extend the trendlines and bicarbonate reaches the edge of the healthy range by 2076, with calcium and phosphorus following by 2100.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The authors stress that the link is only correlational; measurement methods varied from cycle to cycle. But they argue the match is close enough to take seriously, because human physiology evolved under a stable ~300 ppm and is not equipped to handle this much extra CO2.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Previously:<br \/>\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/boingboing.net\/2026\/06\/18\/in-1986-a-cameroonian-lake-released-a-co2-cloud-that-killed-1746-people-overnight.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">In 1986, a Cameroonian lake released a CO2 cloud that killed 1,746 people overnight<\/a><br \/>\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/boingboing.net\/2026\/05\/26\/this-air-quality-monitor-is-a-cute-bird-that-dies-when-you-need-to-air-out-your-home.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">This air quality monitor is a cute bird that dies when you need to air out your home<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most of human evolution, the air held about 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide. It has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6395,54462,4253,97,330318,5599,79],"class_list":["post-774269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-air-quality","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-climate-change","tag-health","tag-nhanes","tag-public-health","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}