Use of Indoor Pot Plants to Cleanse Indoor Air

Polluted indoor air, air contaminated by Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), are a major cause of headaches, nausea, concentration loss and other ‘building-related illnesses’. Previous laboratory research by the Plants and Environmental Quality Group at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has shown that the ‘pot plant system’ (plants-and-potting-mix combination) can daily eliminate several times the Australian maximum exposure concentrations of the common VOCs benzene and n-hexane. The main removal agents are the potting-mix micro-organisms. The plants mainly contribute by maintaining their root-zone microbial communities (see Nursery Paper 2001/2)