ABSTRACT
In urban area inhabitants are permanently exposed to several pollutants, level of which depends on traffic intensity or vicinity of industrial emitters. At a certain moment the strength of the negative impacts of human beings became so great, that only the most resistant species are able to survive, very often on the cost of limited growth and development. Present state of knowledge and social awareness of negative anthropological impact on the environment leads to search for ways to decrease it and, as much as possible, to compensate for the damage already in place. One of the most difficult to protect components of the environment is air. In urban areas air pollution became one of the biggest challenges for environmental protection, both because of the ease of pollutants’ transport in the atmosphere and the difficulty of their removal. It is worth stressing that plants are the only higher organisms, which have successfully inhabited sites polluted with, for example, heavy metals and organic compounds. As they remain in one place for a long time they had to elaborate protective mechanisms enabling them to survive in extreme environmental conditions. Plants affect chemical, physical and biological processes in the environment and steer them in such a way as to repair the environment and make it as close as possible to the optimum.
