Fun facts about blood

Brush up on these fantastically fun blood facts. You can drop them into conversations to impress your mates, use them at your next trivia night or just find out a bit more about why your blood is so powerful.

1. Blood types were discovered by Karl Landsteiner in 1901. 
2. In Australia, you can donate blood four months after getting a tattoo, but you can donate plasma straight away (as long as your tattoo was done on licensed or regulated premises in Australia).
3. There are about five litres of blood in the human body.
4. The antibodies in plasma can help prevent infections during bone marrow transplants.
5. 1 in 10 Australian blood donors have O negative blood type 
6. Plasma can offer patients suffering severe burns some relief. Albumin can help replenish and replace lost fluid and proteins, preventing a patient from going into shock.
7. One in three Aussies will need blood products at some point in their lives. 
8. Every drop of your blood contains roughly 200–300 million red blood cells.
9. Donated blood lasts just 42 days, which is why donating regularly is so important.
10. Blood type refers to different molecules on the surface of red blood cells. A mismatch of these molecules between donor and recipient can trigger a fatal immune reaction after a blood transfusion, as the recipient’s body attacks the outsider blood.
11. O negative blood is considered a ‘universal’ blood type, because it can be given to anyone.  
12. In Australia, one blood donation is needed every 24 seconds.
13. There are eight main blood types: A positive, A negative, B positive, B negative, AB positive, AB negative, O positive and O negative.
14. Plasma can be made into 18 different life-giving treatments. 
15. The pigment that makes your plasma yellow is called bilirubin. 
16. The biggest use of donated blood in Australia is for cancer and blood diseases.
17. The spleen is responsible for purifying blood. 
18. Only the red blood cells in our blood carry oxygen.
19. Platelets help by clotting the blood whenever bleeding occurs because of a cut or bruise. This prevents unwanted loss of blood.
20. In 2018 we collected more than 1,390,000 donations from our amazing donors.