Dave and Nick
To determine whether or not inhaled CO is retained by the body, we carried out this experiment:
First, find a legal smoker to volunteer. Remove filter from cigarette. Light a cigarette and use litmus paper to determine CO level of smoke. Inhale cigarette, and then inhale some air to clear out smoke in mouth. Exhale onto litmus paper, and measure level of CO in exhalation.
The CO level of cigarette smoke will be higher than that of exhaled breath after inhaling the smoke from a cigarette, demonstrating that CO is retained within your body after inhaling it.
The litmus paper that was exposed to cigarette smoke directly from the cigarette yielded a dirty orange color. According to the litmus' literature, this color denotes a detectable level of carbon monoxide. The papers that were exposed to smoke inhaled from both a filtered and unfiltered cigarette yielded no such change in color.
The smoke exhaled from the smoker's body demonstrated no detectable amount of carbon monoxide, even though a control sample of tobacco smoke yielded detectable amounts. Therefore, the carbon monoxide remained in the body, permanently attached to the blood cells that carry the gas into the lungs.
Hemoglobin carries oxygen throughout your body in the bloodstream. When carbon monoxide bonds with hemoglobin, it does not release. In fact, it has a two hundred fold affinity for hemoglobin as compared to oxygen. Carbon Monoxide stays with the red blood cell until they die. Your body will be slowly suffocated unless treatment such as pressurized oxygen is administered, which allows the hemoglobin to separate from carbon monoxide and saturate with oxygen. Without treatment, over time, the carboxyhemoglobin will eventually die and become replaced with healthy hemoglobin.