Posted by Sue Landsman on Apr.05, 2009

©iStockphoto.com - Aprad Nagy-Bagoly

We all know that plants can improve our air quality, but which plants are best or just how much they can help? Not only can a few specific plants improve our lives at home, but they can also be used to drastically improve air quality in buildings in some of our world’s most polluted cities.

Kamal Meattle, a green energy specialist from New Delhi, India, recommends three plants to grow your own fresh air indoors. These are not specialized plants that are hard to come by. All three of these plants are very common and familiar to most of us. In fact, it’s likely that you’ve walked by all three of these plants the last time you were in a nearby nursery or greenhouse.

Areca Palm, Chrysalidocarpus lutescens

Meattle recommends this for the living room. All plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2) to oxygen (O), and this plant does most of its conversion during the day. Meattle recommends four shoulder-height plants per person. Palms can be tricky to keep alive and looking good, however. This one requires bright indirect light and heavy watering.

Mother-In-Law’s Tongue, Sansevieria trifasciata

Mother-in-Law’s Tongue absorbs larger quantities of carbon dioxide at night than most plants, and converts it to oxygen during the day. This is a perfect plant for the bedroom, where you are breathing out your own carbon dioxide over a full night’s sleep. You need six to eight waist-high plants per person. This plant is commonly found in nurseries and often overlooked precisely because it seems so common and pedestrian.

Money Plant, Epipremnum aureum

Meattle calls this “The Specialist Plant.” It is good at filtering out volatile organic compounds such as formaldehyde. This plant is commonly know as the Pothos, and is a popular houseplant which can be reproduced easily. It is hardy and easily tended, though it is listed as toxic to cats and dogs by the ASPCA.

Meattle, an MIT graduate, was living in New Delhi, India, when he realized he was suffering from the poor quality and pollution of the city’s air. His lung capacity had gone down to 70% and he was afraid he was going to die. To heal himself, he started researching how to improve indoor air quality with plants. In addition to curing himself, he has brought his knowledge to the field of green building design with great success.

Meattle has been testing out these plants for 15 years at the Paharpur Business Centre and Software Technology Incubator Park in New Delhi, India. This is a 20-year-old, 50,000-square-foot building with over 1,200 plants for the 300 people who occupy the building. In September, 2008, the government of India rated the Paharpur Business Centre the healthiest building in Delhi. Compared to other buildings in Delhi, the occupants of this building have shown lower amounts of eye irritation, respiratory symptoms, headaches, lung impairment, and asthma. Studies indicate that human productivity in the building due to the plant use has been greater than 20 percent, while energy costs have been reduced by over fifteen percent.

The company founded by Meattle, PBC(TM)-STIP, plans to recreate its success on a grand scale in a 1.75 million-square-foot building. This building will end up housing over 60,000 indoor plants.

According to the United Nations Environment Program, March 2007, buildings account for 40% of the world’s total energy use. In addition, the Program expects world energy demand to grow by 30% in the next decade. PCB-STIP predicts that as more and more people flock to cities and work and live in climate-controlled spaces, more than 60% of the world’s population will be living in cities populated by more than 1 million people.

Meattle believes that with the use of plants and green technology, we can cut down building energy consumption from the current 40% down to 10% as well as improve the health and standard of living of the people who work in our cities.

You can see Meattle’s talk, see pictures of these plants, and view his slide show at the greenspaces blog at http://greenspaces.in/blog/

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Posted under Green Clean Air, Home Environment.