The current study39;s data from volumes of potted plant research one step farther, by using it to calculate a measure called the "clean air delivery rate," or "CADR.Many of these studies did show a reduction in the concentration of volatile organic compounds over time, which is likely why people have seized on them to extol the air-purifying virtues of plants."The CADR is the standard metric used for scientific study of the impacts of air purifiers on indoor environments, but many of the researchers conducting these studies were not looking at them from an environmental engineering perspective and did not understand how building air exchange rates interplay with the plants to affect indoor air quality," Waring said.

Researchers reviewed a dozen studies, spanning 30 years of research, to draw their conclusions. Their central finding is that the natural or ventilation air exchange rates in indoor environments, like homes and offices, dilute concentrations of volatile organic compounds -- the air pollution that plants are allegedly cleaning -- much faster than plants can extract them from the air.end-ofTags: indoor plants, air pollution, purified air."Typical for these studies, a potted plant was placed in a sealed chamber (often with a volume of a cubic meter or smaller), into which a single VOC was injected, and its decay was tracked over the course of many hours or days," wrote the researchers. But it39;s also a great example of how scientific research should continually re-examine and question findings to get closer to the ground truth of understanding what39;s actually happening around us," Waring said. 

But the problem with this experiment, and others like it, is that they were conducted in a sealed chamber in a lab -- a contained environment that has little in common with a house or office."This has been a common misconception for some time.The China gas flowmeter for sale high-profile experiment that seemed to create the myth of houseplants as air purifiers happened in 1989 when NASA, in search of ways to clean the air on space stations, declared that plants could be used to remove cancer-causing chemicals from the air.

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