Can humans evolve into an individual that will need polluted air?

Answer

Dear Carl,

In the transition from sea to land life, the animals still continued to get the same molecule from the environment, specifically oxygen, and they have adapted to get it from a different medium (water vs air). With polluted air we still only need oxygen from the air and lungs are still fine to get oxygen from that.

Higher organisms can then adapt to polluted air by ensuring that they still have optimal oxygen (and CO₂ for plants) and bypass the problems associated with the pollutants. So hypothetically, man could develop a denser nasal hair and a thicker mucous layer so that he would be less bothered by particulate matter that reaches the lungs. It is quite unlikely that humans will eventually need this pollution, since they do not need the pollutants to live on.

Certain plants are adapted to soils with a high content of heavy metals. In most species this would cause problems with the metabolism, but these plants move, for example, the heavy metals to the vacuole (separate chamber) in their cells so that they cannot interfere with vital processes, the plant can then go about its business without being bothered. of these substances but she does not need them to grow.

So while it is unlikely that humans will switch to a different respiration because they are a very complex multicellular organism, this has happened in the distant past when unicellular organisms (bacteria) switched to the respiration of oxygen, a substance that was toxic at the time. was for most of the then life. Certain groups of microorganisms still use other types of respiration that are not based on oxygen but, for example, sulfur or other substances and are thus adapted to living in an oxygen-free environment, which in turn is toxic to the more ‘modern’ organisms.