# Is there any justification for the claim that blood travels 12,000 miles per day? Tags: blood-circulation - Score: 8 - Views: 6207 - Answers: 3 - Answered: yes - Asked by: TripeHound (189 rep) - Asked: 2019-11-06 - Edited: 2020-06-16 - Site: biology ## Question An oft-quoted "fact" on the internet1,2,3 (and at least once in print4) is the claim: Your body has about 5.6 liters (6 quarts) of blood. This 5.6 liters of blood circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 19,000 km (12,000 miles)—that's four times the distance across the US from coast to coast. Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/heart/heartfacts.html None of the instances I've found provide any justification for the 12,000 miles figure; nor do they cite any authoritative source. Although the 12,000 miles figure occurs often, it is fairly obvious that most (if not all) instances are copied from one of the other instances. Sometimes word-for-word, sometimes paraphrased; sometimes with a mention of the other instance, more often with no mention of the source. It is therefore quite possible that someone "plucked a number out of the air" and the meme-dispersal proper