07/05/2021 18:23
Astronaut Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu, an honorary member of the Romanian Academy, drew attention on Friday to the ignorance with which man pollutes the Earth's atmosphere by deforestation, the "oxygen factory of the planet".
"What struck me as soon as I reached the extra-atmospheric heights was the thinness of the Earth's atmosphere. If you compared the Earth to an apple, the thickness of the atmosphere would not be greater than the thickness of its peel. It is almost shocking to understand that in that thin layer life has developed and all living processes are unfolding and the fact that we, in our ignorance, pollute this atmosphere, poison what we breathe and what future generations will breathe, at the same time deforesting the forests, which represent the oxygen plant of the planet," Prunariu told a scientific session dedicated to the 40th anniversary of a Romanian's first flight into space and 60 years since man's first flight into space, held in the "Ion Heliade Radulescu" Amphitheatre of the Romanian Academy's Library.