Hello,
This is probably not the greatest concern in the history of fighting ignorance; however, I feel there may be hidden benefits from answering a question such as this. Without further ado,
Between snot, earwax, bellybutton lint, and eye-boogers, which bodily fluid is excreted at the most rapid rate. To put another way, at the end of one solar year, which substance will have been produced the most?
I realize there are many variables that go into factoring such a question, so please accept my question with a family-sized grain of salt.
My gut instinct is snot, but I figure better safe than sorry.
Warm regards,
Autolycus
First, point of order, I don’t think belly button lint qualifies as a bodily excretion.
Now snot basically coats the whole respiratory system from your nose to the base of your lungs so I’m saying bucketts per year, unless you mean only that which exits the body, in which case maybe half a buckett.
Tears are next, eye buggers are the crust of dried tears, which are being produced all the time.
Of course, the OP leaves out other excretions that are definitely produced in greater quantities. Urine comes to mind right off… at least, I think urine would beat mucus.
Ignoring the fine point of secretion v excretion (it’s a fine point given the context of the original post), urine’s the overall winner for anything that makes it outside the body for good. This is for ordinary physiology. It may be a stretch to assume that, given the question in the first place…
The intestinal wall has a larger “production” of fluid into the intestine than the kidneys produce urine into the bladder, but most of it is reabsorbed before it gets out the back door. There are other cycles that stay entirely internal (cerebrospinal fluid; blood…) but I’m just guessing these are beyond the scope of any question that includes eye-boogers.
I’m not so sure about that… Wouldn’t carbon dioxide from the lungs have it beat? CO[sub]2[/sub] is certainly more than any of the actual waste products in the urine; it’s really just a question of the water carrying those wastes.
Would saliva fall into the secretion catagory? And where would it rank? I can’t spoeak for the amount of mucus in my body but I sure seem to produce a lot of spit on a daily basis (most of which is just swallowed).
CO2 makes up a very small amount of the contents of the air that you exhale, if you’re going to separate the water from the waste in urine, you have to separate the CO2 from all the inert gas that you breathe in and right back out.
Of course. I was, in fact, referring to only the CO[sub]2[/sub]. But now that you mention it, the reverse also applies: If you’re going to count the water content of urine, then you ought also to count the nitrogen and oxygen in exhalation.
Of course, you could make the case that most of the air you inhale never fully enters the body, in that it never leaves the respiratory track, the same could not be said for the water in your urine.