Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: moccacake on 22/04/2006 22:25:33

Title: plants
Post by: moccacake on 22/04/2006 22:25:33

do plants really improve the air quality inside a house? anyone who can enlighten me, thanks.

Title: Re: plants
Post by: harryneild on 23/04/2006 00:37:17

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Ten years ago scientists from NASA discovered that plants could remove volatile organic chemicals (VOC) from the air inside sealed test chambers. While most of our homes are not sealed like the "biohome" that NASA created, everyone can benefit from removal of VOCs by plants.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/2001/4-13-2001/houseplants.html (http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/2001/4-13-2001/houseplants.html)
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/houseplants.html (http://www.cleanairgardening.com/houseplants.html)

Here i've search about this topic and found a couple of informative sites. It seems that there is some evidence of plants, some better than others, are good filterers of some possibly harmful chemicals in the air.

"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes." Peter F. Drucker

Title: Re: plants
Post by: Andrew K Fletcher on 25/04/2006 13:14:42

Moccacake

According to a new understanding of the purpose of water loss from respiration, having a dry environment inside the home is of paramount importance. For example, it is well established that living in high humidity is bad for our health and can affect the nervous system also.

Every time you empty water on the house plants, they transpire it to the air you breath, causing mould and mildew to form in the rooms. This is further complicated due to the introduction of double glazed windows, so now the water remains in the warmer air and believe it or not, those old metal window frames which we found dripping wet in the mornings were in fact acting as a dehimidifier removing the moisture from the air. Now the warmer air contains more water, leading to respiratory problems and even causing deaths.

My advice is to get rid of many of the house plants that drink lots of water and keep those that require little water. Alternatively, use a dehumidifier if the plants must stay.

See also theory on multiple sclerosis

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