Graphic Shows the House Plants That Naturally Clean the Air in Your Home, According to a NASA Study

This is a quick pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment. If you believe in sci­ence and facts, read on.

Back in the 1980s, NASA pub­lished a research report called “Inte­ri­or Land­scape Plants for Indoor Air Pol­lu­tion Abate­ment” that grap­pled with a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem: Many mod­ern build­ings (par­tic­u­lar­ly office build­ings) have become so well insu­lat­ed and her­met­i­cal­ly sealed that they allow for lit­tle “free air exchange.” As a result, tox­ins build up in these build­ings (for exam­ple, from the off gassing of fur­ni­ture) and the inhab­i­tants even­tu­al­ly pay a price.

In response, NASA looked for nat­ur­al ways to clean up these sealed spaces (like the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion), par­tic­u­lar­ly by avail­ing them­selves of the nat­ur­al air fil­ter­ing prop­er­ties of every­day house plants:

In this study the leaves, roots, soil, and asso­ci­at­ed microor­gan­isms of plants have been eval­u­at­ed as a pos­si­ble means of reduc­ing indoor air pol­lu­tants. Addi­tion­al­ly, a nov­el approach of using plant sys­tems for remov­ing high con­cen­tra­tions of indoor air pol­lu­tants such as cig­a­rette smoke, organ­ic sol­vents, and pos­si­bly radon has been designed from this work. This air fil­ter design com­bines plants with an acti­vat­ed car­bon fil­ter as shown in Fig­ure 1. The ratio­nale for this design, which evolved from waste­water treat­ment stud­ies, is based on mov­ing large vol­umes of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed air through an acti­vat­ed car­bon bed where smoke, organ­ic chem­i­cals, path­o­gen­ic microor­gan­isms (if present), and pos­si­bly radon are absorbed by the car­bon fil­ter. Plant roots and their asso­ci­at­ed microor­gan­isms then destroy the path­o­gen­ic virus­es, bac­te­ria, and the organ­ic chem­i­cals, even­tu­al­ly con­vert­ing all of these air pol­lu­tants into new plant tissue.(31“37) It is believed that the decayed radon prod­ucts would be tak­en up by the plant roots and retained in the plant tis­sue.

You can read the rest of the study here. And, above, find a graph­ic (cre­at­ed by Lovethe­Gar­den) that visu­al­izes the results of the NASA study, show­ing which par­tic­u­lar plants will reduce air pol­lu­tion in your office and home.

For good mea­sure, we’ve also added below a short video where researcher Kamal Meat­tle “shows how an arrange­ment of three com­mon house­plants, used in spe­cif­ic spots in a home or office build­ing, can result in mea­sur­ably clean­er indoor air.”

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