Plant category
Air Purifying
Plants popularly called "air-purifying". They are easy-going and look great, but at normal room scale their effect on indoor air is negligible.
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Plants in this category
Snake Plant
Sansevieria trifasciata
Peace Lily
Spathiphyllum wallisii
Non-toxic to pets
Boston Fern
Nephrolepis exaltata
Non-toxic to pets
Bamboo Palm
Chamaedorea seifrizii
Non-toxic to pets
Areca Palm
Dypsis lutescens
Golden Pothos
Epipremnum aureum
Dracaena Janet Craig
Dracaena deremensis
Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum morifolium
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About these plants
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The "air-purifying" label comes from the 1989 NASA Clean Air Study, which measured plants removing formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene inside small sealed chambers. Homes are not sealed chambers: a 2019 review of those experiments (Cummings & Waring, Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology) estimated you would need 10 to 1,000 plants per square metre to match what normal ventilation already does. The plants in this group, such as Snake Plant, Peace Lily and Spider Plant, are still worth growing for how they look and how forgiving they are. Snake Plant uses CAM photosynthesis and takes in carbon dioxide at night, but the effect on a room's air is negligible (facts vs fiction). Many are easy to care for and thrive in low to medium light. Check our Symptom Checker if one starts showing signs of stress.
How we picked: every plant profile is filed under one category, and this page lists all the published profiles filed under Air Purifying.
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