Background understanding of the environment

Air Pollution is the contamination of the atmosphere due to the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter or biological materials into the environment. The release of these toxic substances will cause harm to the environment or health problems to humans. Air pollution is responsible for significant annual losses of food and fiber crops, ornamental plants and trees. Other living organisms will also be affected by air pollution. Smoke is a type of air pollutant and can lower the quality of the air we breathe.

What is smoke?

“Smoke is a complex mixture of different gases and particles. Burning wood, fuel, plastics, and other synthetic materials produce smoke with a variety of chemicals. Regardless of what specific chemicals make up the smoke, it can cause health effects.”

Smoke emissions will cause relatively negative severe health problems on humans when they inhale the smoky air in the surroundings. These health problems include cough, shortness of breath, hoarseness, headache, and acute mental status changes. The emission of smoke will also cause negative effects on the local environmental parameters. For example smoke produced is absorbed by plants because it lingers in the air. The symptoms of air pollution damage to plants include: “ (1) collapse of leaf tissue with the development of necrotic patterns, (2) yellowing or other color changes, and (3) alterations in growth or premature loss of foliage.”

In Singapore, the sources of air pollution include “stationary sources such as power stations, oil refineries and industries; mobile sources such as motor vehicles; and others such as open burning of waste materials and transboundary air pollution”. These sources produces smoke to the environment. Singapore through decades of planning and cultivation, has earned the name of a Garden City. Singapore is a lush green city that is nestled in an environment of trees, flowers and parks. If smoke produced from the sources stated above not only affect humans but the plants as well, there will be a reduction in the growth of plants. Hence, this is the cause of our research on how the amount of smoke the plants are exposed to can affect their growth.

Another reason why we became interested in this experiment was because one of our group members grew placed her pots of plants on her balcony which was very near to the roadside. She never did expect that her plants would actually suffer from the effects of air pollution (smoke produced by vehicles travelling on the road). In general, there were colour changes and stunted growth in her plants. Hence, we decided to come up with this experiment to measure how the amount of smoke exposed to the plants will affect the plants. It is hoped that through the experiment, a better understanding of how the plants are affected by the amount of smoke it is exposed to will be gained.

Vehicle producing smoke

The 4 pots of plants being used in the experiment