• Question: If you cut down a tree, is oxygen or carbon dioxide released in the air, and is it possible to poison yourself with carbon dioxide?

    Asked by anon-181914 on 25 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Joanne Sharpe

      Joanne Sharpe answered on 25 Jun 2018:

      Carbon dioxide wil be released into the air as the tree is left to rot, which is bad for global warming, but it wouldn’t be a high enough dose to poison you! It would be released slowly into the environment.

    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 25 Jun 2018:

      I think Joanne has answered the tree aspect perfectly. Just a general note on carbon dioxide poisoning: yes, it would be possible to poison yourself with carbon dioxide although not in the typical sense. If we were in an air-tight environment and with a limited oxygen supply, eventually we would use up all the oxygen and (as we breathe out carbon dioxide) we would end up breathing in carbon dioxide. As we would keep breathing, our lungs would keep filling and emptying as normal, but would not be supplying our blood with oxygen and we would die. Interestingly, it is not the same as being suffocated as the brain knows we can breath freely, but what it isn’t aware of is what is being breathed in is of no use to the body, so a person only breathing CO2 would just feel a bit light-headed, fall unconscious and die.

    • Photo: Liza Selley

      Liza Selley answered on 28 Jun 2018:

      The other important molecule released by a dying tree is nitrogen which will be harvested by bacteria in the soil. Nitrogen is found in amino acids – the building blocks that make up proteins and is released again when the tree’s proteins are degraded by bacteria. The nitrogen seeps into the soil in the form of a molecule called nitrate which can be absorbed again by other plants. This process is called the nitrogen cycle.

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