Question from Noel Kehrlein
Hi Debra,
Do you know anything about this product?
www.plantairpurifier.com
Thanks.
Debra’s Answer
This air purifier sounds doubtful to me.
Here’s their explanation.
The Plant Air Purifier uses a common houseplant to clean the air. Plants have natural air-cleaning abilities, but to use plants as air filters is difficult due to the numerous houseplants necessary to clean air sufficiently and efficiently. This is the capability of the Plant Air Purifier; one Plant Air Purifier has the cleaning power of 100 standard houseplants. The Plant Air Purifier achieves this through a unique design that increases airflow past the root system which is the host of toxin consuming microbes.
Air containing toxic elements passes through the porous growing media and activated carbon by means of a high velocity fan. The activated carbon within the media attracts chemicals and holds them until the microscopic organisms (microbes) eat the toxins. The byproducts of the consumption process are nontoxic food and energy for themselves and the host plant. Over time microbes adapt to their environment and the chemicals they are exposed to; they quickly acclimate to the amount and type of toxins in the air, thus becoming more efficient at consuming these chemicals.
They aren’t using the plant technology at all developed by Dr. Wolverton (the basis of their advertlsing). The plant is just sitting on top of activated carbon and it’s the microbes in the roots that eat the toxins.
If you are interested in this type of technology, the O2 purifier that I recommend is much more specifically designed in terms of collection of the pollutants and presence of microbes. I don’t see any air testing here, and it just seems inadequate in size and power.
