• Question: How many elements are there in the human body ?

    Asked by bristowboy2 to Jony on 21 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      I don’t know the answer for sure, but I can try and make an educated guess:

      My guess is that all of the naturally occuring elements are in your body, at least in trace amounts.

      Let’s imagine that 0.0000001% of your body is just random dirt that comes from the fact you inhaled a bit of dust, swallwed a fly, or ate a vegetable with a bit of soil on it. The least common natural element is Iridium, which makes up only about 0.00000001% of the earth’s crust. So, we could imagine that 0.00000001% of the 0.0000001% of you that is random stuff is Iridium. That means 0.00000000000001% of you is Iridium.

      That doesn’t sound like much Iridium, but even that tiny amount is 20000000000 atoms!

      I’ve made some big assumptions above, but I’d be willing to bet that there’s at least a tiny amount of every element in your body.

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