Blood
About 98.5% of the oxygen in a sample of arterial blood in a healthy human breathing air at sea-level pressure is chemically combined with the hemoglobin. About 1.5% is physically dissolved in the other blood liquids and not connected to hemoglobin. The hemoglobin molecule is the primary transporter of oxygen in mammals and many other species (for exceptions, see below). Hemoglobin has an oxygen binding capacity between 1.36 and 1.40 ml O per gram hemoglobin, which increases the total blood oxygen capacity seventyfold, compared to if oxygen solely were carried by its solubility of 0.03 ml O per liter blood per mm Hg partial pressure of oxygen (about 100 mm Hg in arteries).
Gas exchange
It is only as a result of accurately maintaining the composition of the 3 liters alveolar air that with each breath some carbon dioxide is discharged into the atmosphere and some oxygen is taken up from the outside air. If more carbon dioxide than usual has been lost by a short period of hyperventilation, respiration will be slowed down or halted until the alveolar formula_3 has returned to 5.3 kPa (40 mmHg). It is therefore strictly speaking untrue that the primary function of the respiratory system is to rid the body of carbon dioxide “waste”. In fact the total concentration of carbon dioxide in arterial blood is about 26 mM (or 58 ml per 100 ml), compared to the concentration of oxygen in saturated arterial blood of about 9 mM (or 20 ml per 100 ml blood). This large concentration of carbon dioxide plays a pivotal role in the determination and maintenance of the pH of the extracellular fluids. The carbon dioxide that is breathed out with each breath could probably be more correctly be seen as a byproduct of the body’s extracellular fluid carbon dioxide and pH homeostats