LAHORE: Government College University (GCU) students on Friday organised a walk on the campus to raise awareness of air pollution and smog and urged the government to grow sunflowers to combat it.

The walk was followed by the formation of a human sunflower in the Oval Ground.

GCU Institute of Industrial Biotechnology Director Prof Dr Hamid Mukhtar, talking to the media, said smog was the biggest threat to human health and a cause of multiple syndromes, including eyes and respiratory infections.

“Smog’s identity is maintained by the particulate matter which consists of small particles or droplets suspended in the air that have width of 2.5 micron or less. These are air pollutants and can enter even the smallest airways of human body,” he explained.

Multiple solutions to smog issue were available worldwide, including smog-eating buildings, smog towers and chemical reduction of smog components, Dr Mukhtar said and added that all the treatments were either expensive for a third-world country like Pakistan or the treatment was creating secondary problems and persistence in environment.

“To solve the problem, students of Institute of Industrial Biotechnology (IIB) have proposed a better and eco-friendly remedy of mass plantation of sunflowers,” said the director.

Dr Mukhtar claimed the students had studied the activity of sunflower plants to solve environmental problems and it had been shown scientifically that sunflower plants could reduce the major components of smog and degrade them to harmless components. He said planting sunflower could reduce the continuous persistence of smog that they were facing.

GCU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Hassan Amir Shah appreciated the efforts of the IIB students, saying the institute had always played its role in providing solutions for various environmental issues. He said sunflowers, reported to absorb the main pollutants of smog, was a neutral and eco-friendly solution of the problem. He said sunflowers were planted across the landscapes to help absorb toxic metals and radiation from the soil after the Hiroshima, Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear disasters.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2017