Indoor Plants That Boost Air Quality In Your Home

The air quality in your home has a direct impact on you and your family’s health. Even the cleanest of homes can suffer from poor air quality; a number of common household products can emit toxins and harmful chemicals into the air of buildings. Thankfully, there are easy and cheap ways to boost air quality in your home.

Understanding Air Quality

There are a range of at-home kits available for checking and monitoring air quality. Many can be found at most home improvement stores and will provide readings on humidity, dust particles, allergens, toxins and chemicals, and temperature. These readings can be tracked to help you identify contributors to poor air quality, enabling you to implement measures to combat the sources.

Factors That Impact Air Quality In The Home

Indoor air pollutants are made up from two main groups – particulate matter that includes dust, pet hair and microscopic particles of dirt. Gases such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and Sulphur dioxide along with toxins released from plastics, synthetic fibers, cleaning fluids and carpets that include benzenes, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde.

How you choose to heat your home, cook your food, and clean will all impact air quality. Some building materials, damp, and poor ventilation and seals around windows can further decrease the quality of air we breathe indoors.

Improving Air Quality At Home With Plants

Certain plants have air cleaning qualities that make the ideal additions for your home. Careful selection can enhance décor as well as the air.

Garden Mum and Peace Lily are both flowering plants that are excellent at removing ammonia, benzene, and formaldehyde from the air. These champions are two of the few indoor air cleansing plants that produce beautiful flowers. The Peace Lily is a hardy plant that can withstand neglect, likes to be away from drafts and enjoys indirect sunlight. Garden Mum is available at most garden stores and is happy planted in a pot indoors, or outside in the garden. Her blooms come in a variety of colors.

 

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Spider Plant and Dracaena are both easy to grow and ideal for forgetful owners and beginners. Dracaena is toxic to dogs and cats if eaten, but easy to care for – it can be pruned to keep its shape at any time and doesn’t need regular watering. Both Dracaena and Spider Plant enjoy bright indirect light (through curtains or a sunny windowsill). Spider Plant produces tiny white flowers on long stems and both are great at removing formaldehyde and xylene, Dracaena will also rid the air of trichloroethylene and benzene.

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If you’re looking for something that’s hard to kill, Snake plant (sometimes referred to as Mother-in- Law’s tongue due to the sharp edges of the leaves) is the plant for you. It only needs occasional watering, preferring drier conditions and some sun. Given that it removes benzene, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene and xylene from the air, Snake plant is one of the easiest plants for boosting air quality at home.

Other Air Quality Improvement Tips 

Vacuuming at least once a week with a good quality machine that has a HEPA filter can remove a large proportion of particulate matter from your home. Drapes, bedding and other fabric items should also be regularly cleaned.

Choosing products with non-toxic ingredients to clean with, removing dust from surfaces and carpets, and ensuring your window and door seals are effective can all help. Taking shoes off when indoors will minimize the dirt, pesticides and fecal matter that can be brought into your home on the soles of shoes.