LAHORE: Students of the Government College University (GCU) have proposed the government to invest on growing sunflowers to combat air pollution. The proposal was made during an on-campus walk organised to raise awareness about smog on Friday. GCU IIB Director Prof 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. Talking to media, Prof Mukhtar said smog was biggest threat to their health and multiple syndromes occurred due to it including eyes 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 width of 2.5 micron or less. These are air pollutants and can enter even in the smallest airways of human body,” he explained. He said multiple solutions of smog 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 environment. “To solve this problem, students of Institute of Industrial Biotechnology (IIB), have proposed a better and ecofriendly remedy i.e. mass planation of sunflowers. They studied the activity of 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. Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Hassan Amir Shah appreciated the idea by the IIB students, saying that 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 ecofriendly solution of 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 Daily Times, December 16th 2017.