Students look to sunflowers to combat smog

Hold an on-campus walk to raise awareness in society

LAHORE: Students of the Government College University Lahore proposed that the government grow sunflowers to combat smog, the extremely hazardous form of pollution which recently made the lives of Punjab’s population miserable.

They held an on-campus walk to raise awareness about smog in society. GCU Institute of Industrial Biotechnology (IIB) Director Dr Hamid Mukhtar led the walk from the University's Sports Complex which was followed by the formation of a human sunflower in Oval Ground.



Dr Mukhtar said smog was a huge threat to health and multiple syndromes were caused by it, including eye and respiratory infections. "Smog's identity is maintained by the particulate matter. Particulate matter consists of small particles or droplets suspended in the air that have the width of 2.5 microns or less. These are air pollutants and can enter even in the smallest airways of the human body."

The GCU IIB director said multiple treatments were available worldwide which included smog-eating buildings, smog towers and chemical reduction of smog components. “All these treatments are either too expensive for a third-world country like Pakistan or the treatment creates secondary problems and persistence in the environment.”

"To solve this problem, students of IIB have proposed a better and more eco-friendly remedy—the mass planation of sunflowers.  They studied the activity of the sunflower plant to solve environmental problems. It has been shown scientifically that sunflower plant can reduce the major components of smog and degrade them to harmless components. So, planting sunflower can reduce the continuous persistence of smog that we face," the GCU IIB director claimed.



GCU Vice Chancellor Dr Hassan Amir Shah appreciated the idea by the IIB students, saying that 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 to the problem. He said after the Hiroshima, Fukushima, and Chernobyl nuclear disasters, fields of sunflowers were planted across the affected landscapes to help absorb toxic metals and radiation from the soil.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2017.