Dumb question, but when buildings like airport terminals are located in Denver, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs or other places 6,000 feet high, is the interior air also lacking oxygen to the extent that the outside air is? I assume that since there is no pressurization (airplane style,) that everyone inside an office building, enclosed stadium, school, is all breathing low-oxygen low-pressure air just like they are outside?
I don’t think of it as low-pressure, low oxygen. It’s only 6k feet here in Colorado Springs. We’re fine. Now, when I visit Leadville, CO (over 10k above sea level), well, then that’s noticeable.
But yes, there’s no extra pressurization.
Yes, the buildings are not typically pressurized other than air conditioners pushing air through the building.
No.
Note that there is no way of pressurizing the terminal, but that isn’t necessary to increase the oxygen content. The partial pressure of oxygen could be increased by pumping in pure oxygen if they wanted to.
But they don’t. They do have supplemental oxygen available at Denver and probably most other high-altitude airports for travelers who are suffering from altitude sickness.
Note that the air in Denver is not low in oxygen. That’s poor terminology or a misconception, or both.
Denver air has the exact same percentage of oxygen as sea level air does. And one pound of sea level air contains exactly as much as air (and oxygen) as does one pound of Denver air.
The entire difference is air pressure. Such that one pound of air in Denver is bigger than one pound of air in Miami. Said differently, there’s less air in a cubic foot of Denver air than in a cubic foot of Miami air. Since your lungs work by volume, not weight, there’s less air in every breath. And correspondingly less oxygen too. less Co2, less N2, less everything.
But in downtown Denver at least, there’s definitely more MJ smoke in a cubic foot of Denver air than Miami air. By a long shot.
Interesting. So if someone forcibly makes themselves breathe, say, 17% harder and deeper during their stay in Denver, they’d get as much O2 into their body as they’d get in a normal sea-level place?
Note that SLC is merely 4,265 ft up. Piffle.
I am at 6,100 feet. I look down my nose at those people.
@Velocity 2 posts up.
Sorta.
There are other factors related to the effective partial pressure of oxygen in the blood driven by the molecular affinity between hemoglobin and oxygen that affects how well you can compensate for low pressure with more and more aggressive breathing.
To a first approximation at an altitude as low as Denver the answer is “mostly yes, but not entirely”. Up at 20K feet or atop Everest the answer becomes “No, other factors become more limiting and as hard as any animal could breath isn’t enough to make up for the pressure reduction versus sea level”.
I live in a fairly close-to-sea-level area (Chicago area, elevation about 600 feet); I’ve been to Denver a number of times, and never felt like I was short of breath or anything like that.
But, that said, while hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park (elevation ~7600 feet and higher), I did feel that way, at least a bit. (And that was when I was in my 20s, and in reasonable shape.)
A lot of tourists make that mistake when they come to Colorado…. If you come from somewhere with a Msl or 3000’ or less you should spend a few days in Denver area to get acclimated before going up into the mountains…otherwise we be in for a bout of altitude sickness. Especially if you go from DIA straight up to the tourist traps like Vail or Breckenridge.
I’ve stayed in Snowmass Village & Telluride (8200 &8700’) about a dozen times and found the elevation problematic. This isn’t the case for stays in Denver or Boulder.
When I was 20, I took a bus from Memphis to Denver and then a small plane to Aspen. The second day there I got very sick from what I thought was food poisoning from bus station food. I took a miserable bumpy flight back to Denver where I abandoned my bus plans and flew home. Now 50 years later, it strikes me that I was probably suffering from altitude sickness. I didn’t think about that at the time because I’d been to Aspen the year before with friends, but we had driven there after spending two days in Denver and Golden and had no issues.
It’s worth noting that “airplane style” pressurization is equivalent to an elevation of 8,000 feet. Denver, et al, have denser air than an airplane cabin.
We had a family trip to Colorado years ago, with two days each in Denver and Colorado Springs. No problems. Then we took the kids to YMCA of the Rockies near Estes Park, elevation 8000 to 8700. I got the worst case of altitude sickness there after a non-strenuos hike: no hunger, huge headache, wanted a dark room. It was gone after a few hours and I was fine the rest of the week. I thought we had spent enough days acclimating, but obviously not.
We had to buy gas there, and it seems like lower-octane levels were normal. I was skeptical at first, but the car ran fine.
Altitude sickness is at least in part genetic. People of Tibetan heritage that grew up elsewhere at sea level typically don’t have issues when they visit Lhasa (~12,000 feet).
First time I went to the Tibetan plateau. Somewhere around 12 or 13,000 feet. The altitude effect was walk about 10 feet, head spinning, feel like throwing up and passing out. Could not speak a full sentence. Would say two or three words, pause to breath, say a few more words, pause to breath, rinse lather repeat.
I remember running to make a connection in Denver, and that’s one of the few times my throat actually hurt trying to breathe.
I took some pills to avoid altitude sickness in Lhasa. it was the only place where a small oxygen cylinder is part of in-room amenities you can buy. (Did not try it) I did note short of breath climbing steps or walking fast, and we were quite tired and slept a lot more (Conk out at 8PM to 8AM plus afternoon naps sometimes).
I read about the train they’ve built connecting Lhasa with the rest of the Chinese network. (Apparently quite the accomplishment). It hits some fairly high altitudes in some of the passes (16,000’?), and supposedly they add oxygen to increase the oxygen partial pressure in the passenger compartments.
Another fun fact, mechanical hard drives have a read/write head that floats on the cushion of air that’s dragged along by the spinning disk. They also have a tiny(!) hole to allow pressure equalization. Apparently in some of the extreme high altitude the low pressure would cause the head to crash and scrape the disk platter, because air pressure was not high enouh to “float” the head.
While it can be misunderstood I would say it is correct. There is less oxygen per cubic foot of air in Denver than at sea level. Saying low pressure AND low oxygen is really saying the same thing twice.
Aircraft are typically pressurised to 8000 ft so on landind at Denver passengers experience an increase in air pressure.
Didn’t have any trouble living at 6000 feet, but coming back down to live at sea level, I was a star. Too bad I wasn’t actually involved in any kind of sport.
There is a breathing exercise one can do to help try to combat onset of altitude sickness. Basically inhale deeply so you have more pressure inside the lungs and breath out but cause a restriction such as breathing out though the month with the lips mostly closed. I used this once when I want skiing at the Arizona Snow Bowl (something like 13-14K summit elevation). I was in the lodge for 2 hours or so doing that after feeling some effects of altitude up there, before I felt well enough to head back out and stay on the lower lifts for the rest of the day.
Concur. It might be misleading from a purely scientific point of view, but in an everyday sense, your lungs will contain fewer molecules of oxygen when you inhale a full breath, when you are at higher altitudes, so it’s perfectly fine to say the air contains less oxygen (implied per volume).