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Houseplants helpful for clearing the air


Houseplants helpful for clearing the air

Peace lilies can suck up plenty of carbon dioxide, improving indoor air quality in winter.

Photograph by: Boyan Dimitrov , Fotolia.com

If you're struggling with today's Sudoku or crossword puzzle, it may have more to do with a lack of houseplants than with a lapse in your mental acuity.

Research shows that today's well-sealed buildings often have elevated levels of carbon dioxide, particularly during winter. Although the levels aren't dangerous, the stale air can make people a bit drowsy and less able to concentrate.

Houseplants can help counteract those effects because while we breathe carbon dioxide out, plants breathe it in. It's a terrific relationship, and one I think more people should exploit to help improve the air quality in their homes and offices.

Now lest you think a lone African violet on your desk will do the trick, think again. Yes, every plant helps, but the amount of carbon dioxide that can be removed depends on variety, size and number of plants, as well as the quantity of sunlight the plants get.

All plants remove carbon dioxide from the air, but some, such as peace lilies, Chinese evergreens and pothos are better scavengers than others. For example, a peace lily might absorb three or four times the quantity of carbon dioxide as would a dracaena of equal size. That said, total leaf surface area is even more significant than the type of plants you have. Carbon-dioxide-extracting superstars can easily be outdone by bigger, less efficient houseplants. That same peace lily might pull a kilogram or two of carbon dioxide out of the air in a year, but a three-metre-tall fig tree can absorb a whopping 11 kilograms.

To get the maximum benefit from houseplants, they also need lots of sunlight. Without it, plants don't have enough fuel to draw in the carbon dioxide and store it as sugars. A houseplant that sits in a dark corner won't help reduce carbon dioxide levels. But move that same plant to a sunny spot where it will grow and thrive, and its extraction factory will fire up.

Now, there are scientific ways of determining the number of plants you need to achieve significant carbon dioxide removal, but suffice to say that the more plants one has, the better.

Perhaps the simplest way to determine if you have enough is to keep adding plants until your puzzle-solving speed plateaus.

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Peace lilies


Photograph by: Boyan Dimitrov, Fotolia.com


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