croc hunter

[Bear05]

ok find a college bookstore and look for a biochemistry book.  the table of contents should tell you where to look.  and remember the scale we're talking about.  when you exhale it's mostly carbon dioxide, assuming you dont have cancer pneumonia or TB theres also maybe 25% oxyegen,  along with small(.0*%) of amounts each breath that are pretty much every by product of all our cells functions-carbon monoxide, NADPH, sugars...this is why a breathalizer works.

[JackHammer]

Breathalyzers have nothing to do with Carbon Monoxide! and besides, cabon monoxide is born from a incomplete chemical combustion, and the last time i check, humans don't use combustion engines as a means of providing the necessary energy to funtion their organic activities.

[Bear05]

the breathilizer is to point out that many comppounds besides oxygen and carbon dioxide are exhaled.  and a combustion engine is exactly what our mitochondra are.  it functions at a slower rate and more controlled.  look at all the steps to break glucose to CO2. its uses enzymes and cofactors to do this, but the physical changes proceed in the same order as fire.  burn a potato chip and the same thing happens to it as would if you ate it, only faster.  sometimes the body gets backed up, or lacks some cofactor or intermediate product so progression stops-basically incomplete combustion.

[Azmodon]

Two points to Bear.

And a point to JH for spelling correction.