Forest for your nose
My anthropocentric view on how to cleanse your breath
An alarming increase of air quality index in Jakarta
Jakarta’s bad air quality has been a hot issue since people living there mentioning repeatedly how smog smothered the fully air-conditioned skyscrapers they worked in. According to Greenpeace report released in early 2019, Jakarta is listed as Southeast Asia’s most polluted city. It is also shown in Air Visual stated in The Jakarta Post that the capital’s AQI has never been categorized as “healthy”, and the index is extremely higher than any other capital cities in developed countries. It is scary to think about how polluted the air is, while throwing an unfinished takeout lunch in the inorganic trash bin, of course. Even though the issue arises in Jakarta, but it doesn’t mean that other cities are safe. Rumor has it that Denpasar, Bali also has a similar issue, with an index that is slightly lower than the capital. There are actually various data about this air quality, but the intention of these facts is bad air quality may harm you in a long term kind of thing; this will not affect you right here, right now; but later on.
The government said, it is not “that bad”, though —the increased concentration of particulate matters that affect bad air quality is due to construction projects, which is common for the city’s development. Are they trying to say that sacrificing your lungs for city growth is acceptable?
They also said that there are differences in the parameters of quantifying air quality. They said to The Jakarta Post (29/06/2019), standard used in Indonesia only monitors dust particles of PM10, while US AQI (the standard used in Greenpeace and Air Visual) measures PM2.5. PM stands for particulate matter and the numbers after it are the maximum size of those matters, which means smaller than 2.5 µm/m³ for PM2.5 and smaller than 10 µm/m³ for PM10. According to the national standard, the air quality is acceptable for 87% of days in January — June 2019, and only 13% of days in Jakarta where you can’t breathe safely.
These stated facts above are for outdoors air quality, and I overheard people that said “my office is indoor and I barely go outside so I think it would not affect me that much?”. Would it, though? It got me thinking really hard and finally made me do a mini research about indoor air pollution. The answer is, yes, there is such thing as indoor air pollution. Surprisingly, indoor air is polluted between two and five times greater than outdoors most of the time. Matthew S Johnson, chief science officer at Airlabs (an air filtering technology) said in BBC (16/10/2018) that “indoor air contains whatever pollution you have outside, plus whatever you are adding inside a building, such as cooking, cleaning products, volatile organic compounds from decorations and building materials”. You have to be sure that the air inside your building filtered thoroughly to make sure it is not polluted. Therefore, wherever you are, this issue is important for you to be concerned of.
The cause of it
City development, which is a hot issue right now in especially the (soon to be moved) capital city of Indonesia, claimed to contribute the air pollution the most. Vehicles produce carbon monoxide as the byproduct along with coal-burning power plants are also the villain here. Using cars to go to places alone is ineffective in terms of fuel use and pollution. And hey, electricity is always taken for granted by leaving TV and lamps on when not used. The air conditioner produces green house gas, and the burning fuel that electrify air conditioner emits green house gas too. Those are things that I slowly work on myself (and I believe some people too) to not contribute, though massive industries should be watched out too (in fact, they are the ones that should include environmental perspective in their productions the most).
The government comes up with green areas to cope with the problem, but why? And how? Well, we will get on that later. Some forests are even protected for this. However, the unprotected ones, are massively converted for the city development which includes houses, industries and infrastructures. I wonder how they calculate the green areas needed to assimilate the pollution though, as it turns out didn’t work effectively. Not to mention the deforestation — due to the failure of forest protection — are decreasing green areas (that is barely even there).
Something that fascinates me now is the piled up organic and inorganic waste, though. The inability of organic litters to contact the oxygen affects its decomposition. It is due to inorganic litters that mixed with them, therefore they have to decompose anaerobically (without oxygen) and activate the microbes that emit methane in the process. It is similar to livestock and other agriculture problems which emit the same thing. Methane (CH4), as we might already know, is one of the green house gases. Aside from its effect on global warming that leads to climate change, Climate and Clean Air Coalition said that it is a key precursor gas of the harmful air pollutant — tropospheric ozone (O3) — which is a major component of urban smog.
How forest protects you
It is mentioned that green areas can help filtering those harmful human’s byproduct (pollution), yet how these amazing food making organisms become the shield that protects us from those harmful matters?
Green areas consist of land autotrophes; green organisms that made their own food by converting light and carbon dioxides into complex organic compounds to feed themselves. Including but not limited to trees, grasses, flowery plants, and palmaes. The ecosystem whom unite them all, creating habitat for other living organisms to depend their lives on it, is forest. Forest is one of green areas that has complex interaction, therefore not all green areas are forest.
The major role of the green organisms whom protect your nose is taken by the trees. The main focus of green areas that mitigate air pollution, and for a forest to be called “forest”, is the tree. Mainly because trees create bigger and much complex habitat and resulting in the dependence of various living organisms. How do they clean the air, though?
Physically, the PM2.5 and PM10 are trapped in their leaves and also their trunks, thus trees with bigger canopy, bigger leaf area, plenty leaves and strong branches are more considerable. Chemically, all autotrophes transform carbon dioxides (CO2) into oxygen (O2), and CO2 is one of the green house gases that contributes to global warming. One of the greatest green house gases, which is more effective to trap heat than CO2, is methane. It can be reduced naturally by anaerobic oxidation by microbes and also methanotrophs, which contributes to dry soil oxidation. This healthy cycle can be found in a healthy ecosystem, which provides the shelter for all organisms to live. It is all provided by forest, and actually can be made in a simple habitat in green areas. To simplify, forest hosts all the living organisms that takes role in processing the byproducts into something useful to other organisms, in which creating an endless cycle. Therefore, by protecting what naturally absorbs pollution, we protect ourselves too.
On a side note, and a bad news, trees that naturally absorb physical particulate matters and harmful gases could cause plant diseases. Of course it has to sacrifice something, and of course the helpless, innocent ones will take the blame.
How to reduce air pollution and protect forest in your smallest act
To slightly reduce air pollution — because nature has limitations to assimilate the byproducts (and also to reduce plants’ sacrifice) — the conclusion is to be more conscious. Conscious on what gases we emit, if we overuse the electricity, if we don’t finish our lunch and don’t make sure that they are composted well, if we overuse the transportation that uses fuel, if we do something that requires burning (like cooking, campfires). I know we can’t completely ignore them, that case we can’t even survive to live. But by being conscious, we can be more aware and slowly reducing our emission. And how to protect forest? It is as simple as stopping land conversion. Let forest land be a forest land, let the animals, microbes, plants, and fungi live there and do their role in their niches.
It is a pity that non talking plants have to suffer from the mess that (so-called conscious) humans have caused. Maybe we should learn from their sincerity. Isn’t it fair to protect what protects you silently?
*I have been procrastinating to finish this article since June 2019. I know this issue is literally so last year but I think this writing deserves to be published (of course this is a personal opinion). I hope people can be more aware, and gain more information while reading this. And also, I am open to be corrected so feel free to discuss. I wish you all a happy (belated) new year! I wish this issue would not arise again in this year!
