The Complete Series On Air Pollution + Solutions – Part IV

In the first three parts of this series, we’ve covered a number of the issues that air pollution can cause as well as their solutions. In this final part, we will talk about how exercising, staying away from a sterile environment, being around plants and thinking about your own personal health should all be considered when it comes to tackling air pollution.

Work Out 

Not only is exercising one of the best ways to improve your overall wellbeing, but it also helps limit the harm caused by air pollution. The best time to exercise is going to be in the morning while ozone levels are low (they peak during the evening). Evening time is going to be when levels of pollutants such as particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide decrease.

Even if the air is polluted, the benefits of exercising exceed that of not exercising. If you are worried about the polluted air, try wearing a respirator. The only instance where you should stay away from exercising in polluted areas would be if you are suffering from any heart or lung disease. Outside of that, there’s no excuses to be made here.

Use Vegetation as a Defense System

When it comes to reducing exposure to all types of outdoor air pollution, vegetation can certainly play a factor. Generally, the more plants you have around your environment, it actually can enable them to entrap some of the air pollution.  Understand that plants can serve as a filtering system for air pollution, so the denser the plant, the more air pollution you can expect it to capture.

When it comes to what plants are helpful, some of them include conifers, pines, and green roofs. Even cadmium and other heavy metals can end up being captured by plants too. Some other options that can work are Slowmound (Pinus mugho), Dwarf Blue (Pinus pumila), Japanese Maples (Acer palmatum “Shaina” and “Mikawa-Yarsubusa”), and magnolia.

Here are a few other plants worth noting that you may want to plant around the house.

• Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris)
• Japanese spindle (Euonymus japonicus)
• Common Ivy (Hedera helix)
• English Yew (Taxus baccata)
• Anglojap Yew (Taxus media)
• Chinese privet or wax-leaf privet (Ligustrum lucidum)

Again, the denser the ground-level plant, the greater its capacity to filter out the air pollution. Hence, a strategy worth considering would be to plant high pine trees that perimeter your home to capture air pollutants above the ground. Surround this with lower conifers or pines (such as taxus species) to provide a line of defense for ground-level air pollution. Finally, you can further install rooftop vegetation for a last line of defense against pollutants that slip past the perimeter.

Recall that vegetation reduces ventilation. This means that trees planted on the side of the road have the ability to entrap pollution emitted by cars. While this does reduce air pollution in areas adjacent to the trees, pollution levels roadside suffer an increase as a result.

Nonetheless, vegetation has the ability to reduce some of the most damaging outdoor pollutants, such as ozone, particulate matter, and nitrogen dioxide. But what do you do when enemies have broken the line of defense and air pollutants have now entered your home? It’s simple: use indoor plants.

Indoor plants have been shown to not only reduce amounts of VOCs and ozone, but to also have the capability of reducing CO2 levels. These are the following indoor plants that may be able to reduce VOC levels:

• Wax plant (Hoya carnosa)
• Red ivy (Hemigraphis alternata)
• Common ivy (Hedera helix)
• Asparagus fern (Asparagus densiflorus)

Spider plants are also known for their unprecedented ability to remove particulate matter. Make sure your indoor plants are given a generous amount of sunlight exposure, which can help in their reduction of CO2.

Skip The Sterile Environment

 You may think that to avoid exposure to pollution that you should make sure to stay away from everything. But actually, a totally sterile environment is not the way to go, since being exposed to some bacteria or drinking milk that’s raw can help with immunity. When an environment is overly clean, it may not help your health because germs are different than pollutants.

Not every air pollutant is an issue, but the kind of exposure, the amount of them, and the type is what matters.

Today modern air pollutions expose us to obscene levels of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and mold in comparison to what our ancestors faced. Our relationship with bacteria is completely different than that of our ancestor’s had, leaving us–from an evolutionary perspective–completely exposed to unnatural pollutants such as find particle matter, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide.

This is why manufacturing a completely sterile environment free of air pollutants is not the solution. If you happen be living in a sterile environment, make sure you compensate by getting spending time breathing air in clean and natural environments (such as a forest).

Think of Your Relationship with Pollution

Although this one may seem obvious, its importance demands that it not be skipped over. For example, if you have asthma, you need to be mindful of not exercising in overly polluted areas. If you are someone who has had a history with heart or lung problems, you are going to be more predisposed to the negative effects.

That being said, it’s important to recognize the scope of air pollution’s effect on our health. Minimizing exposure to air pollution can help optimize your mental and physical performance in all areas of life. On the other hand, it does a sneaky job of damaging our health, playing the long game that remains invisible to us before catching up 10 to 30 years down the road. Knowing this, always make sure you can stay one step ahead of the game.

What you should ultimately take away from this series on air pollution and fifteen solutions is that managing air pollution is doable, yet far from being simple.

The morbid truth is that the urgency of proper air pollutant containment will not be an issue of urgency until the day it comes when it does. When that day comes, it will most likely be too late. This is of course unless you try and do something about it.