I can’t believe I’m in the middle of an argument about this, but I am. Apparently, much of the world thinks that veinous blood is blue. The general line of specious reasoning is twofold:
- Veins are white when empty, but blue when there’s blood in them (mine actually look green to me, except where they’re purple, so I may not, in fact, be human).
- As soon as blood hits the air, it becomes oxygenated and therefore becomes red. Therefore, you never catch blood being blue, but it’s blue. Trust me.
The Dope has already weighed in on this: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1419/if-blood-is-red-why-do-your-veins-look-blue. Unfortunately, the word of a mere phlebotomist apparently doesn’t cut it. It’s beginning to feel like an argument about the existence of gods.
Can anybody please give me a winning argument? Qadgop, perhaps?