How long can a person survive in an air tight room?

Question

Say a 3 meter square room.

Answer 1

a 3 meter square room is just 2-d so lets say 27 cubic meters (3*3*3). a room this size would have approx. 27,000 liters. The air we breath is 21% oxygen. We only use 16% of that, thus leaving us with 5% oxygen returning to the atmosphere.
The average tidal volume, air we breath in is 500 mL.
if we make the assumption that every liter has 100 parts(for the 100%) then there are 21 parts per liter.

21 Parts/liter * 27000 liters = 567000 parts of oxygen.

If we use 16 per breath then 567000/16= 35437.5 breaths. would use up all of the oxygen. at and average rate of 20 breaths per min.

25437.5/20= 1771.875 min =29.5 hrs we could survive.

there are other variables though. the rate of breathing for one.

the other is that we accatually will die when the oxygen level gets to about 7-9%.

so to be same i would say about a day.

Answer 2

It depends upon the cubic footage within the room, and the activity that the person performs while inside the room. And your size information is incomplete...square denotes length times width...What is the height (floor to ceiling)?

If it is 8 feet high that is cool...Say it is 9 feet or about 3 Meters high...Then there are 9 cubic meters of air within the room. But it is best if you specify the size, not me...

I agree with one person who suggested using hillary for a test subject. At least that would keep her out of trouble for a while.
And, maybe we wouldn't have to listen to her for a little bit.

Answer 3

Assuming that the air inside the room is of normal composition, and the person is a full-grown, healthy, and nonpanicking adult (emotions play an important role in breathing rates), I would guess definetly less than a minute. I'm not sure, but here's how I got it:

The average adult takes about 12-20 breaths a minute.
The average air is 21% breatheable.
The average adult takes 500 mL of air a breath.

So. You can already tell by looking at those statistics that the person will run out of breathable air very quickly, wheeze a lot, and then keel over, unconscious, eventually dying. How morbid!

Answer 4

What is the height of the room? The volume of the air is important. Could be a few hours to a day or so , I am guessing.

Answer 5

It depends on the size of the room, the speed with which the person uses up the oxygen and the size and age of the person in the room.
for example a smaller person (child would probably use up the oxygen at a slower rate

Answer 6

A scuba tank contains about 72 cubic feet of air at room pressure, and it will last about 90 minutes if you're diving just below the surface (again, almost at atmospheric pressure).

Just do the numbers with the dimensions of the room.

Answer 7

A little over a day.
I set the height of your room to 2.5 m giving it a volume of 22.5 m3 (3x3x2.5). It would then contain 17.55 m3 N2, 4.725 m3 O2 (6.10 kg) and 0.0086175 m3 of CO2 (0.017 kg). The CO2 is the key. It becomes poisonus at 5% and humans exhale about 2 kg per day. With the volume of this room, 2.22 kg of CO2 would yield the poisonus 5% concentration. If scrubbed out, the air would be breathable for nearly 4 days as humans consume 1.6 kg of oxygen per day.

Answer 8

Vivian your statistics are meaningless because no one uses 100% of the oxygen in a breath, it's nowhere close to 100%, our lungs are not that efficient.

Answer 9

for as long as there is still oxygen
it depends on the size of the room
it depends on the health condition of a person
it depends on the emotion of a person thinking for his death

Answer 10

It would depend on how much oxygen that person needs and how much they inhale per breath and how much CO2 they exhale.

Off the cuff answer: Not a long time.