Indoor Plants Can Quickly Remove Dangerous Toxins From Air
Sourced from Earth.com
New research led by the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in collaboration with the leading Australian plantscaping solutions company Ambius has found that plants can efficiently remove toxic gasoline fumes – including cancer-causing compounds such as benzene – from indoor air.
Offices and residential buildings often connect directly to parking garages by doors or elevator shafts, making it challenging to avoid harmful gasoline-related compounds seeping into these indoor spaces. Moreover, many buildings are also exposed to gasoline fumes from nearby roads and highways.
Breathing such fumes can cause lung irritation, headaches, and nausea and, over time, lead to an increased risk of cancer, asthma, and other chronic diseases, contributing to decreased life expectancy.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), poor indoor air quality is responsible for 6.7 million premature deaths globally and, since most people spend over 90 percent of their time indoors (for instance at home, school, or the workplace), developing new strategies to improve air quality is crucial.
Now, the experts discovered that the Ambius small green wall, which contains a mix of indoor plants, is highly effective at removing harmful pollutants, with 97 percent of the most common toxic compounds being removed from the surrounding air in as fast as eight hours.
While previous research has shown that indoor plants can remove a broad range of indoor air contaminants, this is the first study to examine the ability of plants to clean up gasoline vapors.
“This is the first time plants have been tested for their ability to remove gasoline-related compounds, and the results are astounding,” said study lead author Fraser Torpy, an expert in indoor environmental quality at UTS.
“Not only can plants remove the majority of pollutants from the air in a matter of hours, they remove the most harmful gasoline-related pollutants from the air most efficiently, for example, known carcinogen benzene is digested at a faster rate than less harmful substances, like alcohols. We also found that the more concentrated the toxins in the air, the faster and more effective the plants became at removing the toxins, showing that plants adapt to the conditions they’re growing in.”
From the Living Architecture Monitor
