Now this is one jobs plan I can get on board with! Are you reading, Congress? Of course you aren’t.

India’s Rural Development Ministry has recognized two problems: youth unemployment and bad air quality. But they’ve decided to kill two birds with one stone – to plant 2 billion trees and hire up to 300,000 of the nation’s youth to do it.

“The length of National Highways in the country is one lakh kilometer [about 62,137 miles]. I have asked officials to come out with a plan to plant 200 crore [2 billion] trees along these stretches which in turn would create jobs for the unemployed on the one hand and protect the environment on the other,” said Shipping and Rural Development Minister Nitin Jairam Gadkari.

Recent studies have shown that tree leaves can capture a surprisingly large amount of particulate pollution. From TreeHugger:

Then the team placed a screen of 30 young silver birch trees in wooden planters in front of four of the houses, including one of the control houses, for 13 days. Wipes from all eight houses showed that ones with the tree screens had 52 to 65% lower concentrations of metallic particles. A comparison of all of the dust monitoring data from the two original control houses confirmed that drop, showing a 50% reduction in PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 in the house with the trees in front.

By examining the silver birch leaves with a scanning electron microscope, the researchers confirmed that the hairy surfaces of the leaves trapped metallic particles. Like the particles measured inside the houses, these metallic particles are most likely the product of combustion and brake wear from vehicles passing by. Previous work has indicated a strong correlation between the amount of material identified by magnetic remanence and benzo(a)pyrene, a carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon found in particulates, Maher says. – Read more great articles at HigherPerspective

SF Source HigherPerspective  December 4 2014

(Thanks, Rose)