How to Grow Your Own Fresh Air

You can dramatically increase the health of the air in your home, office buildnig or business with just a few plants. Research has shown that with only three varieties of plants, we can “grow our own fresh air” in indoor environments – the Areca palm, Mother-in-Law’s Tongue and the Money Plant.

This idea was tested at the Paharpur Business Centre and Software Technology Incubator Park in New Delhi, India where they filled the 20-year-old, 50,000 square foot building with 1,200 plants – 4 for every occupant. It has since been found that there is a 42% probability of increasing blood oxygen by 1% if one is inside the building for 10 hours, and incidences of eye irritation, respiratory symptoms, headache, lung impairment and asthma have decreased dramatically.

Surprisingly, one effect of placing so many plants in an indoor space was energy conservation. GreenSpaces found in an experiment that energy costs were reduced by an amazing 15%. They now plan to test this concept on an even larger scale, in a 1.75 million square foot building – using over 60,000 plants.

From GreenSpaces:

Kamal Meattle reported the results of his efforts to fill an office building with plants, in an effort to reduce headache, asthma, and other productivity-sapping aliments in thickly polluted India. After researching NASA documents, he concluded that a set of three particular common, waist-high houseplants—areca palm, Mother-in-Law’s Tongue, and Money Plant—could be combined to scrub the air of carbon dioxide, formaldehyde and other pollutants.

At about four plants per occupant (1200 plants in all), the building’s air freshened considerably, and the health and productivity results were staggering. Eye irritation dropped by 52 percent, lower respiratory symptoms by 34 percent, headaches by 24 percent and asthma by 9 percent. There were fewer sick days, employee productivity increased, and energy costs dropped by 15 percent.

GreenSpaces believes that the use of indoor plants could help reduce energy consumption around the world. By “growing” fresh air indoors, there’s less need for a constant supply of external fresh air in air-conditioned buildings.

Bringing plants indoors is such a mood helper, too – especially during the winter. You can keep the air you breathe cleaner & healthier, beautify your indoor space and brighten gloomy days just with a few inexpensive houseplants – who wouldn’t want that? We can’t wait to see what the results are of the test in the new GreenSpaces building.

Link [GreenSpaces]

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