GaryM
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Gary M
If I add 1 molecule of lead to every breath you take, and every sip of water you drink. Would you be okay with that?
Yes, yes I would!
Since no one has done the math in this thread (and feel free to check this), at 20 breaths a minute, or 28,800 a day, or 10,512,000 a year, one would inhale about 840,960,000 times in an 80 year lifespan.
So 840,960,000 atoms of inhaled lead is a big scary number, right? Except Avagadro's number (6.023 x 10^23) is so very much bigger. At the rate of one atom per breath, one would inhale 0.000000000000001 mol of lead in a lifetime. 207.2 g/mol, so that works out to a lifetime exposure of 0.29 picograms (0.00000000029 mg).
Figuring out the lifetime exposure to lead based on one atom per sip of water is left as an exercise for the reader. But it will also be a lot of atoms, with a total weight almost indistinguishable from zero.
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