Biological indicators of air quality in Brisbane, Australia

During very considerable progress in industry and industrial centres development in late 20^th and early 21^st century, air pollution has become one of the most significant problems of mega cities. Thus, air pollution survey to exert abatement methods has a very important role. Various methods are available for air pollution monitoring which are very costly. Air pollution monitoring by susceptible plants as biological indicators are not only economic but also simple. In this paper, vast studies were done on the plants of around each Queensland Environmental Protection Agency (QEPA) monitoring sites. Around these sites susceptible plants to air pollution were neither available nor exist in all monitoring sites. Therefore, it seemed the best method is the portable exposure benches application with automatic watering system in five sites among all studied locations. In this research different varieties of tobacco like Weather fleck, Bel-B, Bel-W3, Dynes, ZZ100 were used to measure the impact of ozone as a pollutant on them. Parsley cv. Frizz and Leek cv. Vertina were selected as nitogen oxides indicators. In general, the above-mentioned plants were exposed to the ambient air in five sites around Brisbane from April 1997 to May 1998. The susceptible variety leaves of Bel-W3 showed injuries just in two sites. The reason for this is the high level of ozone and the effects of climatic factors in production and dispersion of it during the experiments. The survey results represent that ozone with elevated concentrations is available as far as 30km radius from Brisbane city centre. Within this area only the most susceptible plants’ leaves would be liable to suffer injury.