Contrary to the famous 1989 NASA study, it seems that having plants indoors doesn’t actually improve the quality of the air you breath (as much as it could).
Researchers have found that the use natural ventilation of indoors gets rid of harmful air pollutants much faster than a plant is capable of extracting them.
“The best way to have a healthy home is to try to reduce indoor emissions, ventilate well (especially when doing high impact emissions like cooking), and using filtration for certain pollutants (e.g. particulate matter),” study author Michael Waring of Drexel University told media outlet IFLScience.
It turns out that NASA conducted the experiments in a sealed and controlled chamber, which obviously doesn’t reflect what the air would be like in the average house.
“This is the first systematic review of the literature that examines the removal of volatile organic compounds by potted plants using chamber studies,” said Waring.
“In a small office, you would have to have somewhere between 100 to 1,000 plants to have the same air cleaning impact of ventilation at 1 air change per hour, which is a typical value,” he continued.
He describes air pollution as anything in the air that can be disruptive, gasses, small particles, chemicals; the usual suspects. Anything that may be floating in the air, that you wouldn’t want there. These indoor pollutants have been linked to asthma, allergic reactions, irritation, and other respiratory issues. So it’s important for people, especially people who are already suffering from conditions, to know how to filter out these pollutants.
