We asked ourselves, 'If we have a lot of ozone in the air on a beautiful summer afternoon, what does that do biologically to humans and plants?'

The ultimate goal is to use plants to detect periods of ozone exposure that may also affect human health.

All around us, we see plants that have endured chronic ozone exposure with no apparent adverse symptoms except premature aging and reduced reproduction, ... Could this relate to the human experience? That's what we need to find out. But, in the meantime, it's important for us to determine how ozone exposure affects our forests, our wetlands, our crops, and even our backyards.

Kansas afternoons in late summer are peculiar and wondrous things. Often they are pregnant, if not over-ripe, with a pensive and latent energy that is utterly incapable of ever finding an adequate release for itself. This results in a palpable, almost frenetic tension that hangs in the air just below the clouds. By dusk, spread thin across the quilt-work farmlands by disparate prairie winds, this formless energy creates an abscess in the fabric of space and time that most individuals rarely take notice of. But in the soulish chambers of particularly sensitive observers, it elicits a familiar recognition—a vague remembrance—of something both dark and beautiful. Some understand it simply as an undefined tranquility tinged with despair over the loss of something now forgotten. For others, it signifies something far more sinister, and is therefore something to be feared.

Her legs swing complete afternoons away.

Most people think our breathable air is getting cleaner, and it is in some areas, ... We have fewer days of extremely bad air, thanks to clean air acts. But steady, day-to-day exposure to pollutants, especially ozone, is becoming more prevalent. On bad days, some plants are getting ozone at concentrations of 60 to 80 parts per billion.