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Indoor plants and air quality
Now, straying away from the exciting subject of paints, here
is an extracted article by Bill Wolverton,
a former NASA research scientist and now President of Wolverton
Environmental Services.
When NASA started to draw up serious plans to colonise the Moon
and Mars in the 1970s (I know, I know...) they tried growing
crops in sealed chambers to freshen up the air with oxygen and
supply fresh food. Well those science bods found something very
unexpected - the plants started cleaning up all sorts of toxic
gases in the air. Bill Wolverton, one of those researchers,
realised ordinary houseplants haverather special cleansing powers.
The humble spider plant can remove all formaldehyde in a closed
chamber in less than 24 hours. Begonias eat carbon monoxide,
the dwarf date palm cleans up xylene, aquatic plants like rushes
and water lilies can remove toxic insecticides from water (just
like reed bed systems do).
ecoartisan can help too, with our application of natural paints
and finishes (maybe even a few plants!) you can have a healthy
home environment. Keep your computer, put a spider plant next
to it, paint your walls, with natural paints!
There may be as many as 800 volatile organic chemicals swirling
inside buildings. They seep from walls and ceilings; they're
in our clothing, furniture, and carpets. And one simple and
cheap way to offset many of these toxic gases: common house
plants! Finding out which ones do the best job involves a good
deal of research, the kind of painstaking work done by our friend
Dr Wolverton who has been studying the cleansing effects of
indoor plants for over 25 years.
Not only do plants make you feel good and add beauty to your
home but they clean your environment, their leaves can cut down
noise pollution because they behave like soft furnishings (without
the offgassing), they can make dry centrally-heated rooms more
humid and cut down on static electricity because they evaporate
water. Wow! What lovely little green cleaners!
Good plants include:
Peace lily
Areca palm
Lady palm
Ficus alii
Boston Fern
Gerbera Daisy
Golden pothos
And many more... plus they're very easy to grow, they remove
undesirable indoor air polluting substances, such as formaldehyde
and acetone. They add healthy moisture to a room, and that is
especially important during the cold winter months, when the
air can get dry and it makes you more susceptible to illness.
So these house plants do a lot of good things for us in creating
healthy indoor environments.
And finally – talk to your plants – they feed on
the carbon monoxide that you breathe out!
I very much recommend you check out Bill Wolverton’s book,
50 ECO-FRIENDLY HOUSEPLANTS, published by Seven Dials.
I want to include the PDF ‘pollution eating plants, how
the CO-OP bank has introduced them in Manchester. Go
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