So… Trees sucks in co2 and release o2 during day…. and doing the other way around at night… how would that help cleaning up air pollution then?

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Call me stupid but I was told that while yes, Trees does absorb CO2 form the air and give Oxygen back during daytime. There’s also a reason to not have tree in your enclosed bedroom during night as it release all the CO2 absorbed.

So my question was that people are saying to plant tree to help purify the air in streets, city, or any dense population location. If the statement in first paragraph’s correct. wouldn’t that just result in that the trees would give the o2 and purify the air during day time and just flood the street with co2 during night? I’m confused…

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Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s a few things you’ve been misinformed about or misunderstood:

– Plants don’t “release **all** the CO2 absorbed” during the night. CO2 is also used by plants to manufacture sugars and cellulose.

– Although their effectiveness varies between species and pollutants, plants are able to remove other pollutants from the air, such as formaldehyde and benzene molecules.

– There’s actually three different types of carbon fixation in plants: C3, C4, and CAM. It’s an incredibly complicated topic that can’t really be simplified for an ELI5, but in short plants with different types of carbon fixation are generally suited for different types of soils, temperatures, and rainfall patterns, although there are traits specific to individual species that are also a factor. What’s important here though is only C3 and C4 plants release CO2 at night, CAM plants continue to release oxygen at night.

– (You might already know this, but) Plants don’t produce oxygen from CO2, they produce oxygen by splitting H2O. There are no known biological mechanisms for splitting CO2.

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