What do you do when you are outside the Earth's atmosphere and still want to breathe fresh air? NASA asked itself this question back in the 1980s.
The NASA Clean Air Study of 1989, led by Dr. Bill Wolverton , therefore investigated the air purifying effects of houseplants. The goal was to find out whether plants are able to filter pollutants from the air and thus improve air quality in enclosed spaces.
The study tested different types of houseplants for their ability to reduce chemicals such as formaldehyde and benzene.
The results were promising: many plant species showed a significant reduction in these pollutants, with some plants such as the ivy plant and the spider plant being particularly effective.
In addition, the study found that houseplants not only act as air filters, but can also regulate humidity and improve overall air quality . These findings have important implications for indoor air quality in living and working environments, as well as for the design of space concepts in space travel and other enclosed environments.
The NASA Clean Air Study laid the foundation for further research into the use of plants to purify the air and highlighted the importance of green elements for health and well-being indoors.
You can find the list of tested plants here . We offer a selection of these plants (which are particularly easy to care for and readily available) at AIRY.
You can download the original document of the study here as a PDF.
Important: There has been and continues to be criticism of the NASA study . NASA's basic findings on the air-purifying effect of plants are not in any way doubted. However, their transferability to domestic practice is criticized. After all, NASA carried out its tests in a closed laboratory environment and the plants hung freely in the air. This corresponded to the space agency's research approach of finding a possible solution to the poor air quality in space capsules. However, this is difficult to compare with use on the domestic windowsill. The criticism is therefore understandable.
A 2020 article in Nature magazine explains that it takes a lot of plants per square meter to have a measurable effect on indoor air quality. The reason for this is that the roots in normal pots can hardly have any effect and the air in our rooms would also move and exchange. The authors therefore suggest getting the pollutants under control in other ways, for example with biofiltration technologies:
"Future experiments should shift the focus from potted plants' (in)abilities to passively clean indoor air, and instead investigate VOC uptake mechanisms, alternative biofiltration technologies , biophilic productivity and well-being benefits, or negative impacts of other plant-sourced emissions, which must be assessed by rigorous field work accounting for important indoor processes."
This exact suggestion has already been implemented by the AIRY system:
We have built a biofilter that first captures the pollutants and is then continuously cleaned by the plant roots.
In other words: The AIRY system is an air-purifying cycle that becomes even more effective over time as the plant grows! This is exactly the reason why NASA contacted AIRY in 2018. Read more about this in our blog post "AIRY in the NASA Yearbook".
