Comment by dkdbejwi383 2 days ago
> Abundant houseplants help naturally purify the air.
apparently the effect is grossly overstated. You'd need to cram the place (in all dimensions) so tightly with plants there'd be no room for humans or furniture of any kind for any appreciable difference.
1) the planet is a big, BIG place and there are rainforests and oceans. Like, all of the air that we breathe originally started from ocean life.
and 2) there have been studies on this done by NASA, et al, and the general consensus was you need a lot of plants
1) humans aren’t the only thing consuming oxygen outside. Bugs, cows, fish, etc add up. Similarly there’s a lot of empty land and sea without significant plankton.
The actual issue is plants consume oxygen at night without grow lamps. You can make a meaningful difference in indoor CO2 levels during the day with plants in a large home, but they end up making things worse at night.
Thus plants are likely better in an office environment than in the home.
The GP is not talking about removing CO2 from the air.
Even though no, it's not as simple as they put it, plants do remove particles from the air, humidify it, and emit plenty of stuff on their own (what may or may not be good). You don't need a lot of them to have a large impact.