© 2001 the British Journal of Sports Medicine
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The last "oxygenless" ascent of Mt Everest
Hypoxia Research Unit, Health and Exercise Sciences Research Laboratory, School of Applied Sciences, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, South Wales CF37 1DL, UK dbailey1@glam.ac.uk
Key Words: climbing; oxygenless ascent; respiration; hypoxia
Our continued fascination with the element oxygen (O2), first discovered by Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), is eminently justified, for without it we would simply not survive. Photosynthesis breathes life into what was 1000 million years ago considered to be a reductive atmosphere containing only 1–2% O2. Contemporary estimates now suggest that the green plants on earth combine a total of 150 billion tons of carbon (from CO2) with 25 billion tons of H2 (from H2O) to liberate 400 billion tons of O2 each year, thus accounting for the present day atmospheric content of O2 (20.9%), which has persisted for the last one tenth of the Earth's existence.1
Few are more acutely aware of the importance of the elixir of life than mountaineers when exposed to the innocuous effects of hypobaric hypoxia during ascent to terrestrial high altitude. Since the French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) first showed that
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Huey, R. B., Ward, P. D.
(2005). Climbing a Triassic Mount Everest: Into Thinner Air. JAMA
294: 1761-1762
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