In NASA research[1], common house plants were found to remove toxic agents such as benzene and formaldehyde from the air.
Some of the best air purifying plants: Chlorophytum comosum (spider plant), Dracaena reflexa (song of India), Nephrolepis exaltata (Boston fern), Sansevieria trifasciata (snake plant), and Chamaedorea seifrizii (bamboo palm).
Recently, Waring and his colleagues reanalyzed all 195 studies that have examined whether houseplants can filter the air. They found that some types of plants can remove higher amounts of VOCs than others. But once you factor in the effects of working in a large room, none of the plants are able to do much.
Waring told me to imagine a small office, 10 feet by 10 feet by eight feet. “You would have to put 1,000 plants in that office to have the same air-cleaning capacity of just changing over the air once per hour, which is the typical air-exchange rate in an office ventilation system,” he said. That’s 10 plants per square foot of floor space. Even if you chose the most effective type of VOC-filtering plant, you would still need one plant per square foot, Waring said.
Carpets have become very popular. But cheap ones release tons of VOCs due to fire retardants and anti-stain treatments.
I've switched to a house built in the Scandinavian style, with oiled wooden floors and simple soap-treated furniture. Not only beautiful, but also lacks the typical brand new smell. Theoretically much better in terms of nasty VOCs.
Studies are lacking, so I prefer to err on the safe side. Especially since buying natural furniture that releases less VOCs is not limiting. In fact, it will last longer as materials are of higher quality.
IKEA has a whole range of raw solid pine furniture (without stain) that is incredibly cheap. E.g. an Ingo dining table costs ~$50. Last time I checked, it was manufactured in Poland, and it's pretty awesome quality for the price.
>but was conducted under sealed space station conditions and research conducted since has shown mixed results in the home or office
I love houseplants, decorating an indoor space with them provides me a huge psychological boost. But it's not doing anything physically.
If not is there a market opportunity to create such a product, maybe integrated into home HVAC systems that can sample circulating air with a mobile app dashboard for monitoring levels?
I've always worried that everything in my house is off-gassing and slowly affecting my health and lifespan negatively.
Current devices are all very expensive because they're lab equipment, but there is no theoretical reason for the expense. I'm sure you could design a $1 device with a servo, photodiode and spark gap.
That’s the whole problem with all this “health science.” It’s completely disconnected from expected outcomes that you can use to determine whether this is something even worth caring about.
EDIT re: sibling comment debunking impact of indoor plants. See, this is exactly what I mean. When you don’t tie observed correlations to concrete outcomes, all you do is confuse people. It’s not quite junk science, but it’s not helpful reporting of the science.
i'm not sure how well they filter the air, but it's nice to have green, living things around that are hard to kill. =)