Ozone vs COPD

Some Googling indicates that this Idea might already be "out there" (the link I found wasn't very specific) but since I independently thought this Idea up, and since, very probably, very few people know about it....

An acquantaince of mine was diagnosed with something known as "COPD", an acronym that stands for "Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease". This is not your typical disease that one normally associates with an infection; the word should be interpreted as "Dis-ease" or "not at ease". Because it is most definitely about not being able to breathe easily.

Basically, various things might cause stuff to get into the lungs that Obstructs the ability of atmospheric oxygen to reach the bloodstream via the Pulmonary system (lungs). I had not known anything about this ailment before the particular person mentioned above ended up going to the hospital because of it.

It happens that that person was a fairly heavy smoker, and it may logically follow that the stuff that built up in the lungs was "cigarette tar".

For a first-hand experience of cigarette tar, start with a room painted white, and then let a bunch of smokers use it for a few months. The walls will turn dingy yellow as tar that did not end up in the cigarette filters, or in the smokers' lungs, builds up on the walls.

We can think of that layer of tar as being somewhat in-between a (potentially suffocating) plastic film and a layer of oil (such as we pour onto stagnant water to prevent mosquito larvae from getting oxygen). It logically follows that if enough of it builds up in the lungs, breathing would indeed become more difficult! And will likely stay difficult until something can clean the tar out of the lungs.

Years ago I read in the magazine Scientific American about some early experiments with the lungs. A healthy person really only needs one lung to survive; a volunteer could literally have one lung filled up with water and keep breathing. When I recalled that, I wondered if it might be possible to fill each lung (one after the other) with some sort of soapy water, that would dissolve the tar without damaging lung tissue. Probably the patient would die anyway, though, because the COPD would prevent enough oxygen getting through the OTHER lung, while trying to clean the first lung. (Hmmmm....maybe if a heart-lung machine was used to keep the blood oxygenated...)

If the preceding is workable --and keep in mind some forms of COPD are declared to be incurable-- then I could stop here with a valid original Idea, and without even mentioning ozone (a reference about which I found on the Web, as mentioned). Nevertheless, the urge to explain stuff is upon me....

For anyone who doesn't know, ozone is a variety of oxygen molecule that is constructed from three atoms. The ordinary oxygen molecule that makes up almost 20% of Earth's atmosphere is a two-atom thing. The ozone molecule is not as physically stable as the ordinary oxygen molecule, and the result is that ozone happens to be the second-most-reactive chemical substance known (after elemental fluorine gas). Comparatively speaking, ordinary oxygen is a pussycat compared to the tiger that is ozone.

Note that the "ozone layer" high in the stratosphere, which blocks a lot of the Sun's ultraviolet light, actually consists of a fairly low percentage of ozone molecules mixed with air molecules. But since the layer is miles deep, the molecules add up to form a pretty good shield. Also note that in the lower atmosphere, when ozone is produced by electric sparks in various machinery, the gas is considered to be a pollutant --a very corrosive pollutant! It can also be dangerous if a significant quantity is inhaled, because it can attack and damage the lungs (not unlike chlorine gas, which was used as a weapon in World War One).

Ozone is so reactive that when mixed with a wide variety of other substances, the mixture can be called "hypergolic". This means a major chemical reaction can immediately and spontaneously begin without any sort of spark or other reaction-initiator. (Trivia: NASA likes hypergolic substances in some of its rockets, because they remove a possible point-of-failure in the hardware (reaction initiator device) --simply getting the chemicals together is guaranteed to make the engine roar!)

It happens that besides lung tissue, many of the substances with which ozone is hypergolic are hydrocarbons such as tar. Well, if we now remember that smoker's COPD means that the lung tissue is practically entirely coated with tar, then the Idea here now simply and logically follows.

We need an "endoscope", which is a flexible fiber-optic thing that can be used to examine the interior of a body, and a secondary small-diameter flexible tube (probably made of some chemically resistant stuff like silicone) to carry small amounts of ozone gas. After disabling the natural choking reflex with a local anesthetic, we start sending the two things on their journey into the lungs. They are thin enough to not interfere with the patient's airflow (who is likely inside an oxygen tent, anyway).

After using the endoscope to follow numerous branchings, and reaching some endpoint within a lung, we now gently puff a small amount of ozone into that location. Since it is a small amount, what will happen is that the ozone will react with the first stuff it encounters --tar!-- and get "used up", mostly forming carbon dioxide and water vapor, and leaving the lung tissue unharmed. We now use the endoscope to move to a different location in the lung, and release another puff of ozone. It could take quite a while to visit most of the innards of the lungs in this manner, but by breaking up the tar and relieving the patient from COPD, there is every reason to think the task would be worth it!