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Just a little more CO2 transport info... I never thought my little sister would be so useful but... . My little sis is a first year veterinary student who is in the middle of some research in vertebrate respiration and last night we started chatting about CO2 transport in the body (actually H2CO3). She passed on a couple of things that may or may not be useful to the current discussion... - (Roughly) for every molecule of of H2CO3 that is transformed to CO2 (through carbonic anhydrase in the alveoli) there are two molecules of H2CO3 that get "deposited" (wrong word but...) in your kidney (starting the transformation to uric acid - another complex process). - The carbonic anhydrase does not have any "ability" to "speed up" or "slow down" the release of CO2 into the lungs, it works at a constant speed at any pressure it can function at. Excess H2CO3 will be passed to the kidney (longer process) to be removed. You can see how hard it is for the body to remove excess CO2 (1 fast constant-rate process and 1 slow variable rate process - too bad it's not the other way around). - According to the little bit of background research my sister has done for her project, enzymes like carbonic anhydrase will continue to function at up to 16 ATM, where basically many different enzymes start failing (CO2 buildup might be the least of your worries...) Her only comment on what might be causing the symtoms people here are describing was that whales have an interesting way of dealing with CO2 buildup at depth and that I might want to go research it... (still my snotty little sister ;) Matt Thompson matt_thompson@ta*.co*
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