No, House Plants Can’t Purify the Air in Your Home

To purify your air with house plants, you'd need anywhere from 10 to 100 plants per square meter — enough to turn your apartment into a jungle.

By Nathaniel Scharping
Nov 6, 2019 12:00 AMDec 11, 2019 7:27 PM
Houseplants - Shutterstock
Your houseplants look nice, and they might even make you happier, but they’re unlikely to clean the air. (Credit: Anatolii Mikhailov/Shutterstock)

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If you go for a walk in the forest, the air feels fresh. People often attribute that to trees’ and plants’ air-purifying abilities. They suck up CO2 and exhale oxygen, removing pollutants from the air. So it seems the same should go for the air inside our houses as well.

Humans have tried to bring the forest to their homes for decades, installing ferns, ficuses, bromeliads, peace lilies and more in our urban abodes. Besides looking nice, the assumption is that the greenery will grant us cleaner air through the magic of plant respiration.

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