March is Here!
Have You Been Stuck Inside This Winter?
Discover The All Natural, Affordable Way To Clean The Air In Your Home!
(Hint: It’s Waiting For You At Your Neighborhood Nursery)
Hello friends and clients! Around this time of year I always like to help educate my clients about indoor air pollution, after all, this is the time of year most of us spend most of our time indoors. Closed up in our energy efficient, airtight homes breathing all the molds, pet dander, viruses, and other pollutants found in today’s indoor air.
You might recall some of the startling facts I’ve revealed in the past….
According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) indoor air is 2 to 5 times more polluted than outdoor air. And today we spend about 90% of our time in our sealed up tight homes!
Pollutants indoors are 1000 times more likely to reach your lungs than pollutants outdoors.
Many homes have 25 to 100 times more pollutants in them than polluted outdoor air.
Both biological (molds, bacteria, viruses, pet dander etc.) and chemical pollutants are polluting our indoor air.
The bad effects on our health can range from mild irritations to our eyes and throat…to lifelong allergies, asthma, even cancers.
Just reading that makes me want to run out and buy an expensive air filtration system for my home! But did you know there is a natural, inexpensive way for you to have clean indoor air?
This information was found on Wikipedia under the subject of “air-filtering plants”. It’s a list compiled by NASA as part of a study they did to research ways to clean the air in space stations – you probably can’t find air any more stagnate than that! These plants not only absorb carbon dioxide and release clean oxygen, but they can eliminate harmful carcinogens found in polluted indoor air like benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene. There were 18 plants listed in the study but I only have room to tell you about ten of them.
Here they are:
1. English Ivy (Hedera helix)
2. Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comsosum)
3. Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum “Mauna Loa”)
4. Chinese Evergreen (Aglaonema modestum)
5. Bamboo Palm or Reed Palm (Chamaedorea sefritzii)
6. Snake Plant or “Mother-In-Law’s Tongue” (Sansevieria trifasciata “Laurentii”)
7. Heartleaf Philodendron (Philodendron oxycardium)
8. Elephant Ear Philodendron (Philodendton domesticum)
9. Gerbera Daisy or Barberton Daisy (Gerbera jamesonii)
10. Pot Mum or Florist’s Chrysanthemum (Chrysantheium morifolium)
Most of these plants can thrive on low sunlight and NASA’s recommendation for clean air was 15-18 good-sized houseplants in 6-8 inch diameter containers for an 1800 square fo