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Scientists detect a surprising shift in human blood as atmospheric CO2 rises (www.sciencedaily.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/collapse@lemmy.zip
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[–] 52 points 1 month ago (17 children)

It gets better, at current rates of carbon emission we have until ~2050 before the atmosphere increases bicarbonate levels to the point where basic metabolic processes begin to breakdown.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    Can you break that down so I can understand better. It sounds bad.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago

    Too much carbon dioxide vs oxygen in the air. Your body cannot power itself and unless you find a supplemental source of oxygen, you asphyxiate in the destroyed atmosphere.

    Like trying to breathe on Mars.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago (8 children)

    The PH levels in your blood are going to decrease, reducing storage for necessary elements of metabolic reactions (calcium, phosphorus) in the medium. This is going to impact children and the elderly first, where cellular death is going to slowly cascade across their bodies.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    There is no evidence blood pH levels are affected. This is alarmist media. Are we going to ban soda?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)
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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Biochemist here. People on Lemmy should read links they post.

    As with any buffer system, the pH is balanced by the presence of both a weak acid (for example, H2CO3) and its conjugate base (for example, HCO−3) so that any excess acid or base introduced to the system is neutralized.

    A lot of academic labs love to get attention with alarmist claims, and assume the actual data was done properly.

    See DTT, see BPA, bullshit that never dies.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago*

    The literal paper that this post is about says multiple things about this subject. Did you read that paper?

    Thing #1 is that blood ph is decreasing in lockstep with atmospheric CO2.

    Thing #2 is that it appears the body's buffering system is stressed and is pulling additional calcium + phosphorus from the skeleton to aid in buffering.

    So your comment isn't wrong about the basic idea, you just didnt observe what's happening the larger context. PH is not only predicted to drop, we have already seen it drop, it's already started to happen.

    For this alarmist claim to be wrong, are you suggesting they cannot even accurately measure blood ph?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    There absolutely is, and you can do a simple experiment at home with some water, indicator solution (one can be made with red cabbage juice, but we used to use methylene blue when we did it at the science centre) and a soda water maker (or dry ice) to see it happen.

    It's not completely representative, obviously, but blood is mostly water and the same pH change we can see in carbonation water will happen to blood plasma.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    so we should ban carbonated beverages or not?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Do you perhaps mean ~2070 (50 years after the end of the study data date range)? I mean, both are really scary, the one just gives us a tad more time.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    No, I mean 2050 is when we start to see linkable deaths. We don’t have time, that’s the point.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    But that's not what the article you linked said, so where are you getting 2050 from? The study says if CO2 continues to increase at the same current rate, we would be at the top end of the healthy max bicarbonate level by 2076. Do you have extra info that connects what is said in the article to 2050?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago*

    This 2024 study cuts off the trendline data in 2019. They give the annual rate of increase in CO2 concentration at "over 2ppm" which was the observed rate at that time.

    However the rate surged, and in 2024 it was + 3.75ppm, almost doubling the speed of increase from those predictions. This is what the OP comment means by "at current rates", the paper is way off from how fast things are moving now. We will get higher CO2 much sooner than what they predicted.

    The paper basically just says there is an almost linear relationship between atmosphere and blood chemistry, so if we get higher CO2 faster, the health effects will track that.

    So instead of 50 years until health effects, think ~ 30 years from now.

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