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bcatrek t1_jdz0spy wrote

Nose is meant to inhale gases (air). Water vapour is a natural component of air, and is a gas. Liquid water is neither of those two things (even though you can inhale liquid water if you immediately spit it out through the mouth, it’s a cleansing technique).

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breaktime1 t1_jdz112a wrote

Steam is from boiled water, which is bacteria-free. Non-boiled water can contain brain-eating amoebas also known as Naegleri fowleri. The scary part is it's 97% fatality rate.

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explainlikeimfive-ModTeam t1_jdz1cc9 wrote

Please read this entire message


Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):

  • Loaded questions, or ones based on a false premise, are not allowed on ELI5 (Rule 6).

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Flair_Helper t1_jdz1cfm wrote

Please read this entire message

Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):

Loaded questions, or ones based on a false premise, are not allowed on ELI5. A loaded question is one that posits a specific view of reality and asks for explanations that confirm it. These usually include the poster's own opinion and bias, but do not always - there is overlap between this and parts of Rule 2. Note that this specifically includes false premises.

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phiwong t1_jdz24rl wrote

Inhaling high temperature steam through the nose is NOT safe. It will likely result in scalding and damage.

At room temperature (20C), water vapor becomes saturated in air at around 2.3%. So in any sort of "normal" situation, even if the air contains a lot of water vapor, it is relatively low percentage and you can continue to breathe fairly normally with no issues as it will still be mostly normal air.

You cannot breathe liquid water because human lungs are not designed to extract dissolved oxygen from water. And of course, liquid water replaces the atmosphere which has the oxygen that the human body requires to survive. If you do end up breathing liquid water, this will eventually result in drowning.

Having said that, at elevated but still survivable temperatures (around 50C+), breathing air saturated with water is dangerous. Because the lungs operate at around 38C, water will condense out of the air and eventually fill the lungs. This will eventually result in drowning but slower (maybe a few hours). This situation can occur in certain caves (like the caves in Naica, Mexico also known as the Crystal Caves)

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