Scientist sealed himself in airtight box for 2 days to prove value of plants

Sep 18, 2011 |

London

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A Plymouth University Professor has sealed himself in an airtight foliage-filled chamber in a harrowing test designed to demonstrate the importance of plants to human survival as the ‘lungs of the planet’.

Professor Iain Stewart, of geosciences communication at Plymouth University, Devon, could stay up to two days inside the see-through container for an experiment linked to a new BBC2 series.

The TV presenter and geologist, from near Glasgow, is fronting the first programme in the channel’s How Plants Made The World series.

He clambered into the transparent box, situated at the Eden Project in St Austell, Cornwall, on Thursday night.

The chamber measures 2x8x2.5 metres and is filled with 120 small plants and 30 large ones all producing the vital oxygen he needs to keep him alive.

“Obviously when I’m in there I’ll be using up oxygen so the oxygen levels will be dropping and I’ll be giving out carbon dioxide, so if it was sustained it would be a lethal combination,” the Scotsman quoted Prof Stewart as saying.

The BBC series is likely to be screened in the New Year.

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