HGTV Gardening - Clearing the Air

Clearing the Air
Some plants do more than just look pretty.
by Marie Hofer, Gardening editor, HGTV.com

Green comfort: Many common houseplants (shown here, golden pothos and dieffenbachia) are adept at raising humidity and reducing indoor air pollutants.

The peace lily waited for me on the front step, and I brought it into the house with mixed feelings. Short of space and already living cheek to jowl with dozens of other seedlings and houseplants, I couldn't imagine where we were going to put it. It was a particularly lusty specimen, a gift from a car dealer to thank me for relieving him of a used car. I parked the plant in an out-of-the-way corner, a place where things typically get forgotten.

But this plant was far from ordinary. The first thing it did--in the space of what seemed like only a few weeks--was to double in size. The second thing it did was develop a personality, maybe somewhat on the hysterical side. We left town for a day and when we returned, the peace lily had swooned. Somewhat like a Victorian princess getting the "vapors," it had shown its displeasure at being short of water by releasing turgor in every single leaf; normally upright, the plant cascaded like a river of leaves over the sides of the pot. I watered it, and within an hour, the plant was back to normal.

The third thing it did--or I imagined it did--was to help make us feel good. I'd moved the plant (now quite large) next to the computer, where my husband and I both spend a lot of time. Eventually I noticed that we seemed to sneeze less, complain a little less of eye irritation and generally feel a little more comfortable. And maybe we did, for all kinds of reasons that science has already quantified.

In the early '80s NASA found that plants can purify air. It turns out that a number of plants, including the peace lily, are pretty good at absorbing volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), translocating the chemicals to their roots and breaking them down. A worthy deed, since formaldehyde and/or numerous other VOCs are a natural byproduct of many of the ingredients of modern life--plywood, particleboard, carpeting, synthetic fabrics and plastics, to name the most common. High on the good-plant list are the areca palm, lady palm, rubber plant, English ivy, Boston fern. The spider plant, which has often been linked with air-purifying properties, isn't quite as efficient.

Proximity is everything when you're looking for cleaning power from your plants. A good-sized plant or two can help freshen a work station.

One of the factors influencing VOC-removal rate has to do with the rate of transpiration--that is, how much water evaporates from a plant's leaves. As the plant absorbs water through its roots, air is pulled into the root zone, where microorganisms facilitate the breaking down of the chemicals into sources of food and energy. That would help account for why the peace lily, which thirsts for a lot of water, is so good at what it does.

Still, the best of the air-cleaning plants can remove 1,000 to 1,800 micrograms of VOC per hour, the studies show, but that equates to less than two milligrams of bad stuff. Can people actually tell the difference? A Norwegian study found that office workers whose spaces had plants reported 23 percent fewer complaints of fatigue, stuffy noses, coughing and eye irritation than workers who had no plants nearby. No doubt helping alleviate discomfort was the fact that plants also increase the humidity level of a room to a more comfortable 30 to 60 percent.

Read the rest of the story.

Air Cleaners at Their Best

If you want to help freshen your indoor air, here are some points to keep in mind:

Plants aren't a panacea. You can't offset the effect of an open can of polyurethane with even two dozen areca palms. Plants, no matter how

many you have or what kind, are no substitute for good ventilation and, more important, eliminating or reducing the source of the pollution whenever possible.

Plants aren't powerful vacuum cleaners that suck contaminants from across a large room. Put them near where you spend a lot of time--by your computer, in the kitchen, beside a comfortable chair.

Over-watering or a continuously damp soil surface leads to the production of mold spores. Place an inert material such as pea gravel on the surface of your potted plants or use a hydroponic (growing in water, not soil) system.

Keep your houseplants as vigorous as possible. The healthier they are, the better job they'll do at reducing air pollutants.

--M.H., Gardening editor

Related Articles:

·	Happy Houseplants
·	Choosing Houseplants
·	Preparing Houseplants for Your Vacation

·	Houseplant Killers
·	Hydroponic Systems
·	Home Hydroponics

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