Identification of Air Pollution Index of certain local available plants at industrial area on the basis of Air Pollution Tolerance index

Abstract

Air pollution is a grave problem which affects the health of living organisms (human, animal and plants). Plants act as bio indicator and reduces air pollution due to their physiological and biochemical characteristic. The study was conducted at Talkatora industrial area, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. The ambient air quality status and annual average concentration of major air pollutants (SO2, NO2 and PM2.5) was monitored for 2019 at the Industrial site. The annual average concentration of PM2.5 was reported 119.54 µg/m3, and for NO2 was 42.69µg/m3which is higher than the prescribed CPCB limits. The concentration of gaseous pollutant (SO2) is found to be within the permissible range of 50µg/m3 at the industrial site as concentration of sulphur dioxide was 13.34 µg/m3. Air Pollution Tolerance Index (APTI) of 6 plant species which was pick out from both experimental as well as control site was calculated to determine their biochemical parameters viz. Total chlorophyll content, leaf extract pH, ascorbic acid and RWC (relative water content). According to APTI Ficus religiosa and Azadirachta indica were tolerant species as their APTI was greater than 17 and P. pinnata be the sensitive species reporting APTI lower than 11. In Pearson correlation of biochemical parameter, it shows that Ascorbic acid (R2 = 0.9763) shows significance correlation with APTI.