Pollution busting flags, banners to clean air

UK scientists have developed a pollution busting formula that could be used in advertisement flags or banners on the roads to reduce traffic emissions.
Treating advertisement flags at petrol station forecourts with the pioneering catalytic solution, which removes harmful nitrogen oxide from the air, would help to dramatically cut pollution caused by traffic, researchers said.
The formula has already been used in an innovative collaboration with the London College of Fashion to create clothes which clean the air while they are worn, and also to create the world's first air cleansing poem.
The In Praise of Air poem, by award-winning writer Simon Armitage, Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield, is printed on material measuring 10m x 20m which is coated with microscopic pollution-eating particles of titanium dioxide which use sunlight and oxygen to react with nitrogen oxide pollutants and purify the air.

Displayed in the centre of Sheffield on one of the busiest routes into the city, the catalytic poem has helped to absorb the pollution from 20 cars every day since it was erected back in May 2014.
Its success has now inspired the potential roll out of catalytic flags to help reduce pollution at petrol stations.
"The beauty of the poem and its catalyst is that they have essentially the same mechanism, they effect a reaction without being changed themselves," said Professor Tony Ryan, who came up with the idea of using treated materials to cleanse the air.
"The poem's language is a provocation to change people's minds about the quality of our air, whereas the catalyst uses oxygen and sunshine as a reagent to neutralise a harmful pollutant - so both of them cleanse the air," said Ryan.