Using pot plants to clean indoor air
Polluted indoor air, air contaminated by Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), are a major cause of headaches, nausea, concentration loss and other ‘building related illnesses’. Previous laboratory research by the Plants and Environmental Quality Group at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has shown that the ‘pot plant system’ (plants-and-potting-mix combination) can daily eliminate several times the Australian maximum exposure concentrations of the common VOCs benzene and n-hexane. The main removal agents are the potting-mix micro-organisms. The plants mainly contribute by maintaining their root-zone microbial communities (see Nursery Paper 2001/2).