WATCH out if you’re downwind of a leafy avenue in a hot city. Urban vegetation could increase up to 50-fold the rate at which dangerous ozone is produced.
Some forests emit chemicals called terpenes that when catalysed by sunlight are known to react with air pollutants to create ozone. Now it seems that small clusters of vegetation could do the same.
Mark Potosnak of DePaul University in Chicago and his colleagues measured terpene emissions from plants on sidewalks in Las Vegas, Nevada, and ozone levels downwind. In work to appear in Atmospheric Environment, that levels exceeded the…
