Toxic Air and Plants that Can Clean It
Air in urban areas can be quite polluted. Sources include cars, manufacturing facilities, and more. The EPA identifies six common air pollutants:
- Ozone
- Particulate Matter
- Carbon Monoxide
- Nitrogen Oxides
- Sulfur Dioxide
- Lead
I recommend clicking on the link to the EPA’s site. From there you can explore each pollutant and how it affects your community.
My family and I are moving from North Carolina to New Jersey starting this Wednesday. The idea of moving to Bloomfield, just outside Montclair, terrifies me. I am not a lover of urban areas. Being in New York City for a few hours made me feel claustrophobic and a bit twitchy. This will be an “adventure.” I was curious, though, how the air quality was in the area to which we’re going, so exploring the EPA’s site helped reassure me that I’m not moving my daughter to a completely toxic environment.
Still, air pollution can cause problems in children, including potentially increases ADHD (Perera 2014).
[caption id=”attachment_51118" align=”alignright” width=”300"]
Image courtesy of Structuro[/caption]
Even though I may not be able to change the outdoor air very easily. I may be able to make our indoor air quality a bit better. Thanks to some research NASA performed, we know of some plants that can help clean the air in our homes (Pottorff 2010). While I may need to get quite a few plants to even make a dent in the air quality, even a few plants won’t hurt at least and might do some good.
Plants I’m aiming to get, based on the NASA results and on their supposedly being easy to grow:
- Spider plants
- English Ivy
- Chinese evergreen
- Peace Lily (cleans benzene, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, ammonia, xylene AND toluene)
- Snake Plant
The Wikipedia article noted below has a nice chart for seeing which plants are supposed to help which chemicals, if you’re more worried about one chemical over the others.
Sources and Further Reading:
- Wikipedia contributors. “NASA Clean Air Study.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 7 Jan. 2015. Web. 18 Jan. 2015.
- Perera FP, Chang H-w, Tang D, Roen EL, Herbstman J, et al. (2014) Early-Life Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and ADHD Behavior Problems.PLoS ONE 9(11): e111670. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111670
- Pottorff, L. Plants “Clean” Air Inside Our Homes. Colorado State University & Denver County Extension Master Gardener. 2010.
- Turner, Janelle. “Plants Clean Air and Water for Indoor Environments.” Spinoff. 2007.
- “What are the Six Common Air Pollutants?” Environmental Protection Agency. 22 Dec. 2014.
- Wolverton, B. C., et al. (1984). Foliage plants for removing indoor air pollutants from energy-efficient homes. Economic Botany. 38(2), 224–28
- Younes, Lina. “Indoor Plants May Be Working Overtime.” It’s Our Environment: EPA’s Blog about Our World. 10 Dec. 2009. Web. 18 Jan. 2015.
