How do plants keep the air clean for us?
Plants produce oxygen through photosynthesis. People and animals breathe the oxygen made by plants. Air is exchanged between plants and animals this way to maintain the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air. This is why the Earth’s atmosphere never becomes all carbon dioxide or all oxygen.
Plants also breathe. So they take in oxygen and put out carbon dioxide. But plants produce much more oxygen through photosynthesis than they take in themselves. For example, if you have a tree, like an oak tree or beech tree, in a 100-square-meter area, it will absorb 30 tons of carbon dioxide and produce 22 tons of oxygen in a year. That’s as much oxygen as 80 people breathe in a year. We should be thankful that plants make oxygen so we can breathe clean air.
