Problems related with breathing air under high ambient pressure

Understanding decompression when scuba diving.

A lot of research has been done past the last centuries on the topic of
coping with pressure-related problems encountered by the human body. In the
following thesis we will try to summarize the current standard of scientific
discussion for the sports diver with average medical knowledge.
A look on physiology
The human body consists of a lot of of different tissues, which are mainly
formed by proteins. These tissues are capable of absorbing gases like
nitrogene, oxygene, carbon dioxide and others. Some of these gases are used
for chemical reactions inside the cells of the body (e. g. oxygen), others
are present in our body but having no physical or chemical effect under
normal pressure conditions (e. g. nitrogen).
We will taker a closer look on those gases that don't take part in
bio-chemical reactions. We will refer to these gases as "inert gases".
Considering quantities
The total amount of the various gases that can be soluted, and therefore
stored in the respective tissues mainly depends (on the basis of a
mathematical function) on the partial pressure of the single gases, i.e. of
the fraction of this gas in relation to the overall compound of all gases.
Other co-factors are the time this pressure is exerted to the tissue and the
characteristics of the respective tissue itself (i.e. lenght of the
particular so-called half time period).
Partial pressure
Air mainly consists, roughly spoken, of oxygen (21%) and nitrogene (78%). On
the surface of the earth the overall air pressure is in the range of about 1
bar (9,81N/cm