Assessment of diesel exhaust pollutants effects in Tillandsia capillaris and Ramalina celastri by laboratory trials

MATEOS, ANA CAROLINA; TAVERA BUSSO, IVÁN; CARRERAS, HEBE ALEJANDRA; GONZÁLEZ, CLAUDIA MARÍA

REVISTA INTERNACIONAL DE CONTAMINACIóN AMBIENTAL

CENTRO CIENCIAS ATMOSFERA UNAM

Lugar: México DF; Año: 2022 vol. 38 p. 349 - 363

0188-4999

Traffic-related air pollution is one of the most relevant environmental problems in urban areas. Several cryptogams (i.e. lichens and mosses) and vascular species had been employed to monitor urban air pollution since they allow the assesment of air quality in a large number of sampling sites simultaneously at low cost. In large urban cities vehicle emission are frecuently the major source of air pollution along with residential energy (for cooking and heating), industry, power generation and waste incineration. Biomonitors in this urban environments are exposed to a mixture of pollutants making it difficult to identify which pollutant causes the greatest damage to organisms. However, studies that analyze the effect of pollutants emitted by vehicle exhaust are scarce and in the particular case of the most used biomonitor species in Argentina, no analysis of the effect of vehicle emissions has been carried out so far. So, the aim of this work was to analyze in two well know biomonitors, changes in physio-chemicals parameters (pigment content, proxidation products and sulphur accumulation) in Ramalina celastri and heavy metal accumulation in Tillandsia capillaris, exposed to diesel exhausts under laboratory conditions. A strong damage in the photosynthetic apparatus of R. celastri was observed, showing a great damage to the biomonitor, as well as metal concentration in T. capillaris after 20 minutes of exposure and 48 hours of permanence in the exposure chambers. The results indicate that not only the particles and metals cause damage to biomonitors, but the interaction of these pollutants with other components of the atmosphere that form different secondary pollutants, together with a longer exposure time, could cause the highest level of damage in the exposed biomonitors.