House Plants Filter Indoor Air

I am a huge fan of growing house plants! I used to have a black thumb that killed anything I came in contact with but somehow I turned that poor thing green and now grow over 25 plants inside my house. It is amazing how fast plants can clean indoor air, ridding the house or office of old smells like smoke or chemicals in as quick as 48 hours - making a safer environment to breath in. If you keep your plants healthy by giving them good soil, don't over water, and get plants from local growers who didn't blast them with chem fertilizers and pesticides then you should have almost no probs growing some greenies in your space. (Even if your thumb isn't so green!)

Here's the official Wikipedia list of house plants that filter your indoor air:

"The first list of air filtering plants was compiled by NASA as part of the NASA Clean Air Study, which researched ways to clean air in space stations. As well as absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, as all plants do, these plants also eliminate significant amounts of benzene, formaldehyde and/or trichloroethylene.
English Ivy (Hedera helix)
Spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum)
Golden pothos or Devil's ivy (Scindapsus aures or Epipremnum aureum)
Peace lily (Spathiphyllum 'Mauna Loa')
Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema modestum)
Bamboo palm or reed palm (Chamaedorea sefritzii)
Snake plant or mother-in-law's tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata 'Laurentii')
Heartleaf philodendron (Philodendron oxycardium, syn. Philodendron cordatum)
Selloum philodendron (Philodendron bipinnatifidum, syn. Philodendron selloum)
Elephant ear philodendron (Philodendron domesticum)
Red-edged dracaena (Dracaena marginata)
Cornstalk dracaena (Dracaena fragans 'Massangeana')
Janet Craig dracaena (Dracaena deremensis 'Janet Craig')
Warneck dracaena (Dracaena deremensis 'Warneckii')
Weeping Fig (Ficus benjamina)
Gerbera Daisy or Barberton daisy (Gerbera jamesonii)
Pot Mum or Florist's Chrysanthemum (Chrysantheium morifolium)
Rubber Plant (Ficus elastica)
Top performers for removing formaldehyde.
Boston fern (Nephrolepis exaltata "Bostoniensis")
Florist's mum(Chrysanthemum morifolium)
Gerbera daisy (Gerbera jamesonii)
Dwarf date palm (Phoenix roebelenii)
Janet Craig (Dracaena deremensis "Janet Craig")
Bamboo palm (Chamaedorea sefritzii)
Kimberly queen fern (Nephrolepis obliterata)
Rubber plant (Ficus elastica)
English ivy (Hedera helix)
Weeping fig (Ficus benjamina)
Peace lily (Spathiphyllum sp.)
Top performers for removing xylene and toluene.
Areca palm (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens)
Dwarf date palm (Phoenix roebelenii)
Moth orchid (Phalenopsis sp.)
Dumb cane (Camilla) (Dieffenbachia camilla)
Dragon Tree (Dracaena marginata)
Dendrobium orchid (Dendrobium sp.)
Dumb cane (Exotica) (Dieffenbachia "Exotica Compacta')
King of hearts (Homalomena wallisii)
Kimberly queen fern (Nephrolepis obliterata)
Warneckei (Dracaena deremensis "Warneckei")
The recommendation of NASA is to use 15 to 18 good-sized houseplants in six- to eight-inch (203 mm) diameter containers in a 1,800-square-foot (170 m2) house."

Happy Growing and Happy Breathing!
xoxo

Ozone Air Purifiers Are Evil

Ozone is not good for us. We might already know this but for some reason the manufacturers of a large portion of air purifiers have been putting these insidious little ozone producing gadgets in their machines and claiming it kills mold and bacteria. They claim this as if it is safe and scientific but the fact is ozone is not meant to be in your house or in your lungs because the real science behind it shows clearly it will destroy your health & pollute your home.

When the EPA did studies on ozone air purifiers what they found was surprising - the molecules were breaking down and adhering themselves to any other molecule in the room creating new and unstable chemicals in amounts they could not even measure. They tested the claim that ozone would "neutralize" chems in things like brand new carpet and found it made even worse chems then they started with...many of which were a string of varied aldehyde's. The next shocking find was the ozone machine's main "hook" about killing mold was totally bunk, the amount needed to blast mold into death was just not possible with any household machine and the true amount needed would kill a human dead if they tried to breathe it. This is the amount they use on your bottled spring water.

Did you ever wonder why some spring water tastes terrible, even worse then the plastic bottle taste? Most bottled water companies use UV light to kill bacteria before bottling their product - if you read the label you will see it on nearly every brand, except Fiji & Volvic. That UV light produces ozone and tons of it. The problem is when water researchers tested for contaminants in bottled water they found the same string of aldehyde's as the EPA did, but could not link it to the plastic bottle or to the actual water source leaving the researchers baffled as to how these chems ever got in the water. Any guesses? The ozone blast from the UV filtration altered the chemistry of the water and basically we are being sold bottles of dangerous chemicals to drink. Ozone has some other code names like ionization and UV filtration, which should always be investigated if you are buying a product claiming to use these methods of "filtering" in your home or water.

After a bad run in with ozonating my house (story below) I called a few experts to get the scoop. First I phoned some Mold Specialists who were familiar with ozonation as a method of mold removal - I asked them if they knew of any problems using ozone to kill mold and what they told me was originally it was thought to be a "miracle machine" and everyone was using it, until they found out it was actually "deadly" to human health and not killing the mildew. So, I looked up a Harvard Chemist to find out why ozone could give a bad reaction - what he said was the ozone molecule breaks down very quickly and is completely unstable, therefore adhering itself to any molecule it comes in contact with (ozone is a total molecular slut!), then you are set up for any disaster to chemically take place- he stressed the point the ozone level (ex. 3 or 9) all broke down and that ANYTHING could happen and there was no way to clean up the mess unless you could test the air for every chem possible in the universe.

The reason I was so interested in what all these people had to say was because following a doctor's order to ozonate my house for mold I lost my home and all my belongings to an insane chemical breakdown that would not air out, clean up, or was possible to test. I ran the ozone machine to kill mold, which it did not even do - but quickly realized something else terrible had happened in there when I couldn't breathe, got vertigo, nausea, and my cat and I both had a seizure in the house. Almost everyone who came in the house began coughing, getting dizzy, or suddenly got "flu" like symptoms that could last up to two weeks. The more I tried to air out my belongings in the sun, or wash and dry them the worse they got - so after a few months of this I had to walk away from my home and everything I had, taking only the clothes on my back and my cat. Neighbors bought the house and tore it to the ground, building a new house where my once beloved home had been. I embraced a more zen lifestyle yet was left with heightened MCS symptoms.
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Read more about Ozone Air Machines HERE.
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PS - Thanks to Susie over at the Canary Report for her post on Ozone Air Filters and inspiring me to write this post!!!