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Explain carbon monoxide poisoning.

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Solution

Ans. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a toxic air pollutant. It is exhaled from motor vehicles as one of the exhaust gases, and also from cigarette smoke. Our blood has respiratory pigment, haemoglobin (Hb) in the erythrocytes (RBCs) and it has high affinity for oxygen. As a result, oxygen combines with haemoglobin in the lungs and is carried by blood to various body tissues as oxyhaemoglobin (OHb). Carbon monoxide (CO), a poisonous gas, has 200 times more affinity for haemoglobin than oxygen. When the polluted ahttps://tllms.com/admin/questions/give-carbon-main-sources#ir containing large amount of CO is inhaled, the CO then combines with haemoglobin to form a stable poisonous compound called carboxyhaemoglobin (COHb). This drastically reduces the availability of oxygen to the body tissues and leads to suffocation and finally death.


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