How to supercharge your Peace lily’s cleaning powerYvette

In a previous blog we wrote about the amazing ability of some flowers and indoor plants to remove toxins from the air. We promised a follow up about the whole topic.

Bill Wolverton, a leading researcher about using plants to improve air (and water) quality, has published a bestselling book called How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 Houseplants That Purify Your Home or Office and worked on many environmental projects, both with NASA and in his own capacity through Wolverton Environmental Services Inc. He even rose to the challenge of cleaning nasty VOCs from the pinnacle of sealed ‘homes’, a spacecraft or space station. Check out the company’s website for more information about the power of plants to clean our air and water.

It’s both the leaves and roots of plants that remove toxins; the roots have microbes on them that convert the toxins to plant food. Wolverton discovered that when more air circulates through the roots of plants, they are more effective at cleaning toxins from the air.

Product development in the USA has resulted in the availability of the Plant Air Purifier® which increases by 100 times or more the amount of toxins a single plant can remove from the air. According to the company’s website, ‘The Plant Air Purifier® is an air filtration system that includes a planter, specially developed ceramic growing media, activated carbon and a low-voltage power supply. The planter itself consists of a perforated inner pot and a unique outer reservoir that holds enough water for up to one week. The planter has an electric fan to ventilate the system and a low-water switch in the water reservoir to turn off the fan when the water runs low. All that is required is a plant, periodic watering and a dose of nutrients every few months’.

The system allows plants to be grown without soil and allows the roots and their microbes to be exposed to more air, so they can do their job better.

Japanese interior plantscape company Takenaka Garden Afforestation Inc. has up-scaled the whole idea of supercharging the capacity of plants to clean toxins from the air and now supplies hospitals and other locations with large ‘Ecology Gardens’. The gardens provide the health benefits of greenery and use a specially formulated growth media containing activated charcoal and inert ‘Eco-do’ soil materials to supercharge the toxin-removing capacity of the plants in them.

We haven’t been able to find out whether or how the Plant Air Purifier® can be sourced in Australia.