Can houseplants improve indoor air? - by Markham Heid for Time magazine.

After tidying up your home for spring cleaning, you might think of ways to clean up everything in your home, including the air. Some people think that one way to do that might be by having houseplants inside the home. It makes sense. Plants produce oxygen as they also capture carbon from the air. Could they also filter other pollutants from the air, especially inside the home?
I was recently interviewed about this question for an article in Time magazine. In it, I was quoted as follows:
“There are no definitive studies to show that having indoor plants can significantly increase the air quality in the home to improve health in a measurable way,” says Luz Claudio, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Claudio has reviewed the research on the air-quality benefits of indoor plants. She says there’s no question that plants are capable of removing volatile chemical toxins from the air “under laboratory conditions.” But in the real world—in your home, say, or in your office space—the notion that incorporating a few plants can purify your air doesn’t have much hard science to back it up." 

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