The Human Health Risk Of Breathing Carbon Dioxide

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Last Updated on: 10th August 2025, 02:53 pm

The alleged US government, under the auspices of the EPA, recently issued a new report claiming “the growing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere directly influences the earth system by promoting plant growth (global greening), thereby enhancing agricultural yields, and by neutralizing ocean alkalinity.” Environmental Protection Agency? What a cruel joke. Environmental Destruction Agency would be more like it.

The lunatics running the US today want us to breathe deeply and take in more carbon dioxide with every breath. Why? Because that way, the fossil fuel industry can continue to shovel billions of dollars worth of profits into the pockets of its executives and shareholders. They are incapable of understanding the concept of balance, because it is against their economic interests to do so. Said another way, they are perfectly willing to poison every living thing on Earth in the name of greed.

Balance goes something like this: Imagine you are on a cruise ship far from land. You waiter at dinner fills your glass with water. That’s a good thing, right? We need to drink a minimum of 2 liters of water a day to survive. But, suddenly, your ship sinks and you are in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by trillions of liters of water. Suddenly your relationship with water is dangerously out of balance.

The people supposedly running the show in Washington suffer from a fatal flaw. They are incapable of second order thinking. If a little water is good for us, more has to be better, right? It is a wonder these morons made it past the third grade. Any 8 year old understands the concept of proportion. They know that eating a hot dog is fine, but eating 20 hot dogs will make them sick. If only US leaders were as smart as your average 8 year old!

In a recent research paper written by Ugo Bardi, a professor of chemistry at the University of Florence, in conjunction with Phil Bierwirth, Kuo-Wei Huang, and John McIntyre, the authors investigate the link between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and human health. Their conclusion is that the level today is already posing health risk to a significant proportion of humans and that as the concentration increases, those risks will increase and affect more people.

Perhaps the clearest example of this occurred aboard Apollo 13, the moon mission that suffered a catastrophic failure in space. To survive, the crew had to take refuge in the lunar module — which was designed for only two astronauts. With three of them crammed into the same space, the system designed to remove carbon dioxide from the air was overtaxed, which allowed the concentration of carbon dioxide in the craft to rise to dangerous levels.

Try telling those three men that more carbon dioxide is good for them. Go ahead. Imagine you are at Mission Control and the president has ordered you to say in a calm, soothing voice they are better off breathing in more carbon dioxide and will be better off for it.

The research, published recently by Environmental Science: Advances, is entitled “Carbon dioxide as a pollutant: the risks on human health and the stability of the biosphere.” The timing is interesting, as the failed US administration is busy plotting to reverse the “endangerment finding” promulgated by the real EPA in 2009 which said much the same thing. It says in the abstract:

The consequences of the human-caused increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere are normally discussed mainly in terms of its radiative forcing effect and the consequent global warming and climate change. However, CO2 is a chemically active molecule in aqueous environments, and it has multiple effects on the biosphere. Increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere increase the acidity of seawater and harm marine organisms.

High CO2 concentrations can make the photosynthetic reaction faster in some plants but also negatively affect the metabolism of aerobic metazoans, with harmful effects on human health. These effects are already important for people living in closed spaces and can only become stronger with the projected future increases in CO2 atmospheric concentration.

The present paper is a critical review of a field that is important for the future of humankind. We find that the chemical and biochemical pollution associated with CO2 is a serious problem that may turn out to be no less important than that of radiative forcing in terms of damage to human health and to the whole biosphere. These results also indicate that geoengineering techniques based on Solar Radiation Management (SRM) alone cannot be sufficient to counter the ecosystem disruption caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Whoa! Are these scientists saying all the focus on average global temperatures is preventing us from recognizing the real threat to humanity posed by carbon dioxide? It sure seems that way. It seems that we are all just like the monkeys that Volkswagen and others subjected to exhaust fumes in a desperate attempt to prove diesel exhaust emissions were not all that harmful to human health. The only difference is that instead of one or two monkeys in a transparent box, it is all humans who are being subjected to this grotesque experiment here on our little blue lifeboat at the far edge of a minor galaxy. The geniuses who thought that was a good idea must now have senior position in the US government.

The authors of the report don’t pull any punches. Here is what they have to say about how rising concentrations of carbon dioxide have impacts on more than global average temperatures.

The biochemical effects of CO2 are potentially its most important non-radiative effects on the ecosystem since they directly affect the metabolic system of living beings. This is the main subject of the present paper, which explores an area where, so far, no comprehensive review had been published.

CO2 is a component of the two main reactions that create and maintain Earth’s biosphere: photosynthesis and respiration. Increased CO2 atmospheric concentrations can make the photosynthetic reaction faster, leading, at least in part, to the “global greening” effect observed in recent years. Up to some limits, CO2 also increases agricultural yields in greenhouses but it does not generate an increase in the nutritional content of the food produced.

In the case of respiration, the present review highlights how CO2 may negatively affect the metabolism of metazoans12 and human health in particular by altering the acidity of the blood, the oxygen transfer rate, and the body’s main metabolic processes, including human cognitive performance. These effects are already detectable at CO2 atmospheric concentrations not much higher than the current ones [emphasis added]. The projected increase in CO2 concentrations in the coming decades can only worsen the problem, especially considering the human habit of living in closed spaces where the CO2 concentration is higher than in open air.

Our results highlight the need to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions and bring them to zero as soon as possible. This exploration is also relevant to the current debate on geoengineering, in particular, Solar Radiation Management (SRM), which is based on placing mirrors in orbit or injecting particles into the upper atmosphere to increase Earth’s albedo. This technology can only affect atmospheric temperature, but it cannot avoid the biochemical and chemical damage caused by increasing CO2 levels, as discussed in this paper.

Carbon removal by geological or biological sequestration, instead, goes in the right direction to relieve the problem, even though it remains expensive and involves considerable uncertainties. Phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with low-carbon energy sources remains the most urgent and the most effective option to avoid further increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration [emphasis added].

We know what the problem is and we have the tools to address it. So why are we focusing on hatred of others instead? CleanTechnica readers, who are all well above average, will certainly have answers to that question and we are looking forward to reading them.