Green Belt Recipe for Reduced Pollution

Plantation or green belt (GB) grown around the factories and industrial premises improves the condition of land, mitigates air pollution (as the plants serve as a sink for pollutants and check the flow of dust, etc.), and reduces the level of noise pollution, claims a joint research team from Kolkata and Nagpur. The researchers have done the assessment of green belts of 500-m width in and around a petroleum refinery in the west coast of India.

For the study, they developed software and ran computer-based models using species of deciduous trees existing in the region. The researchers have found that the green belt has been good at reducing pollution and its overall efficiency was more than 60 per cent. The findings of the study have been published in a recent issue of Environment Monitoring Assessment.