Water Content of Human Body Tissues
Key Findings
About This Dataset
Water Content of Human Body TissuesThe human body is famously water-rich, but the distribution is uneven. The lungs top the list at 83%, followed by a tight pair of muscle and kidneys at 79% and another pair, the brain and heart, at 73% - meaning the most metabolically active organs are all roughly three-quarters water. Skin drops to 64%, and the outlier is bone at just 31%, less than half the water content of soft tissue because its mass is dominated by mineral crystal. The clustering into 83 / 79 / 73 bands shows how tissue function tracks water content: gas-exchange and filtration organs hold the most, structural bone the least. Overall these figures explain why total body water averages around 60%.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- USGS Water Science School (Mitchell et al.)
- Coverage
- 7 entities · 7 observations
- Measure
- Water Content (%)
- Last updated
- 12 July 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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