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« Video: Two Vertical Gardens | Main | Patrick Blanc Living Walls - Time Magazine 50 Best Inventions of 2009 »

December 08, 2009

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Comments

Ben Dunigan

Yes ventilation will improve air quality more than house plants, however I don’t open the windows in my house or office for about 5 months a year in the extremely cold and hot months. But to argue they don’t remove pollution is incorrect. The University of Georgia’s Dr. Pennisi clearly shows that Plants can remove, Benzene, Toluene, Octane, TCE and α –Pinene. I ask what benefit is there really to prevent the use of indoor plants?

Clem Cirelli, Jr.

Obviously, live plants benefit the indoor environment and the people who inhabit indoor spaces in various ways, but air quality remediation is not one of them. No real-world building study to date has been able to demonstrate that plants are responsible for removing significant quantities of pollutants (I don't count CO2 as a pollutant, because it isn't one). And the growth-chamber experiments often cited as proof of their air-cleaning value used freshly installed plants grown in optimal lab conditions; those of us who are interior landscape professionals know full well that conditions in office buildings and other interior spaces rarely approach that level of optimal light, temperatures, humidity, etc. And many "professionally" maintained interior plants are not particularly well-cared-for or are metabolizing at a greatly reduced rate for various reasons. So this myth of plants as lean-green-air-cleaning-machines is simply sales puffery and nothing more.

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