Which houseplants should you buy to purify air? None of them

nationalgeographic.com

11 points·pseudolus··7 comments

> “I would hate to see say a low-income family who’s concerned about air [quality] review their options and say ‘I could either buy a $400 air cleaner, or I could go out and buy a $30 plant,’” says Gall. “That plant is not going to improve their air quality—full stop. It just won’t.”

The real question is, why does the air cleaner, which is usually just a fan blowing through an activated charcoal filter, cost $400 in the first place? There’s a market to disrupt, surely.

It doesn't - prices I've seen are more like $200 US for the base level Philips air purifier in a retail store, and there are brands with even cheaper offerings. I see one on Amazon for $135 USD.

Of course, that's still not $30, especially when you add in the cost of replacement filters, but it's much better than the $400 quoted.

OK but since we now have tech like CRISPR why can't we have house plants that do?

Because a houseplant is small and indoor air is replaced every 80 mins on average, they do purify air just not enough to make a difference.

"How do houseplants clean the air? A 1989 NASA study explains exactly how plants remove toxins from air by trapping them in their leaves, soil, and roots, and which houseplants clean air the best.

The study was designed to test air purification systems for the space station."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPNYdSZRSdg

The paper hypotheses an indoor living wall with air being circulated though the plants may be effective at purifying air. I think they could look at an algae co2 capture system to see if that could reduce VOCs.

Though whether or not that introduces more by way of pollens and molds than it filters out is a fair question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com