Indoor Succulent Plants Clean Air of Acetone

Indoor Succulent Plants Clean Air of Acetone

Air pollution outside is easy to spot hanging over the city or sputtering from a tailpipe.  But there’s a lot of indoor air pollution too even if it’s not as obvious.

This is Scientific American’s 60-second science.  I’m Christopher Intagliata.  Got a minute?

It’s caused by volatile organic compounds or VOCs.

“They can come from building materials like paints, carpets; home and personal care products like cleaning chemicals, air freshener, etc.“  [Vadoud Niri, Analytical Chemist, SUNY Oswego, State University of New York Oswego]  “And also they can come from cosmetics.”

And that cosmetics part is what caught Niri’s attention.

“One day when I went to a nail salon with my wife I noticed the smell of specifically acetone in there.”

Acetone can irritate your eyes, skin, nose and throat and in high concentrations can cause nausea, headaches or other nervous system problems.   Niri figured that one way to get rid of acetone might be with houseplants.  He then ran his own experiment using an airtight chamber, eight VOCs in concentrations similar to those found in nail salons, and five common houseplants; a jade plant, a spider plant, a bromeliad, a Caribbean tree cactus, and what’s known as a dracaena plant.  It turns out after a 12 hour test it was the bromeliad that scrubbed the most chemicals from the air, but as for his original quest removing acetone from nail salons, the dracaena beat all the others sucking up ninety-four percent of the offensive compound.  He presented the results at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia.

For a house her apartment he says:

“Use a variety of plants to make sure that you take all type of VOC’s from your indoor air.”

Plus they’re an energy free alternative to other air cleaning devices.  In other words, a truly green solution.  Thanks for the minute for scientific American’s 60-Second Science.  I’m Christopher Intagliata [Music]