House Plants for Your Health!

Plants play an integral role in improving the essence of our lives - the air we breathe.

House plants do much more than decorate our home and office.  Whenever we purchase new carpet, linens, home furnishings or dry cleaning, we bring the chemicals used on the products into our home.  The same applies to the office.  The volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) add to the air pollution in our homes, even when you can't smell them anymore.  VOCs pollute the air enough to irritate your respiratory tract - causing headaches, sinus congestion, fatigue and much more.

NASA has proven that houseplants are an antidote to many household substances that debilitate our air quality, our health and lead to illness and disease.  The plants absorb the VOCs, break them down, and eat them for food. Praise God for His wonderful plan!

What Plants and Where?

Two or three plants in 8-inch to 10-inch pots for every 100 sq. ft. will help clean that zone’s breathing air.  If you double it, that zone will become healthier in about a week.  A breathing zone is about 6 to 8 cubic feet around a person - when they remain still for several hours, such as at a desk or computer, when sleeping, but hopefully not watching TV.

Interior plants, along with their associated, micro flora, reduce levels of noxious gases from indoor air including formaldehyde, benzene, ozone, carbon monoxide, trichloroethylene, and xylene.  Many businesses in the U.S. and internationally are beginning to utilize plants for their air cleaning abilities.

Studies by Dr. Bill Wolverton at NASA's Space Center proved that plants are highly effective, non-energy using air purifiers.  According to studies conducted by Dr. Virginia Lohr at WSU, plants were found to stabilize relative humidity in the office and home, reduce the incidences of flu, improve human comfort and actually improve worker productivity in work places.

Newest results from Dr. Lohr's research proved that the accumulation of dust in interiors can be reduced by as much as 20% by adding foliage plants.  The study reveals the relationship between plants and interior air quality is an important area to pursue, particularly as it relates to effecting human health.

Dust With Plants!

Dusting your office with plants cuts operating costs and employee sick leave.  That's the recommendation from the "Plants for Clean Air Council", based on research from Washington State University.  Placing plants around all types of office equipment actually reduce dust levels in the computer lab, office or home.  Dust can be very harmful to computer hard drives as well as copiers, fax machines, and humans!

In an experiment conducted by Washington State University in the computer lab, where about 2% of the room was filled with plants, dust was lower than in their absence.  Because computer hard drives can be destroyed by excessive dust, increased particulate matter (dust) was a special concern. The results demonstrated that the plants were not contributing to dust.  Instead, they were significantly lower than when they were absent.  The plants occupied only 5% of the room - located around the periphery of the office.

NASA studied the benefits of plants for use in future space stations and closed environments.  Properly designed indoor plants can provide an inexpensive, refreshingly low tech means of removing air pollutants. Indoor air is polluted from the various fibers (carpet, fabrics, wall coverings) and solvents (wallboard, paints, varnishes, furniture) we use to build and decorate our homes and offices.  Two potted plants per 100 square feet of floor space will help to clean and refresh the air in the average home or office, and adding more is even healthier.

To conclude this subject, it is only logical that one should not use toxic chemicals on plants in the environment of humans.  A simple reference guide for several common chemicals is below.

Virtually every tropical indoor plant and many flowering plants are powerful removers of indoor air pollutants.

Below is a chart of the plants in the NASA study that most effectively removed pollutants from the air.
For more information, go to:http://www.standupgardens.com/doc/article03.pdf