How Do Trees and Plants Help Us?

March 8th, 2007 by jeffrey | Filed under Health, Plants, The Earth, Your Body.

Tree by nickatkins

When you take in a breath, what happens? If you take a big breath, you can feel air going into your body through your mouth. But why do we breathe? We breathe because our bodies need something in the air called oxygen. Oxygen is like food for our blood. You can’t see oxygen, but it’s there in the air, and people and animals need it to live.

Your body changes oxygen into a different gas called carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is what comes out of your body when you breathe out. You breathe in oxygen, and you breathe out carbon dioxide.

Trees and plants don’t breathe oxygen as we do. They take in carbon dioxide and they put out oxygen — just the opposite of people and animals. So having lots of plants around is good for people and animals — plants and trees make the oxygen that we need to breathe.

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8 Responses to “How Do Trees and Plants Help Us?”

  1. Aaron Baldwin | 25/06/08

    Hi,

    I really appreciate the objectives of your website. However, as a scientist I think accuracy is of critical importance.

    “We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants do just the opposite — plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen.”

    This is simply incorrect. Both plant and animal cells require oxygen and give off carbon dioxide 24-7 while respiring (breathing). Additionally however, plants take carbon dioxide and utilize it in the production of sugar. The byproduct is oxygen. This is not the same process as is respiration. Thanks

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  2. admin | 25/06/08

    Hey Aaron, yep, of course accuracy is key, but we’re also shooting at an audience of 4-12 year old kids, so the big challenge is to make things simple enough to understand without dumbing things down. It’s a tricky balance! Thanks for your comment.

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  3. not known | 13/04/09

    what are plants good for what do they do for the world other than help you breath?

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  4. patricia | 13/05/09

    oxygen is really inportant kids so never say it isn’t not if you say it nothing bgoing to happen so it doesn’t really matter if you say that oxygen is not inpartant.

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  5. Not saying | 31/05/09

    We need trees and plants to help us breathe! this website is wonderful, it helped me find out a lot i never knew! Oxygen is the one thing we need more than ANYTHING! food-water-rest anything… we need oxygen so this is a good resource as to what it is and why we need it so much!

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  6. lil gawjus ! | 2/06/09

    i think trees r gud 4 us..
    cuz they giv yew oxygen n thts iz wat we ned 2 survive! n we breathe owt carbon dioxide n ths waht trees n plants need 2 survive.

    so its pretty mch 1 of tha thingz we need in our human lives…
    n they r also a beautiful part of our lives.

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  7. lexii | 8/10/09

    Luvv the site keep it goiin!

    Current score: 0
  8. hi | 16/10/09

    plants are cool

    Current score: 0

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