Reviewed: How to Grow Fresh Air [Book]

After the glued vinyl tiles debacle, our entire apartment stank. So very, very, migraine-inducingly badly. For all our efforts to use VOC-free paint throughout – I was horrified to think we’d just thrown our healthy home out the window. DAMN IT.

Enter a helping hand in book-form: How to Grow Fresh Air (50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office) by B.C. Wolverton (1997).

Indoor air quality? I should get off my no-VOC paint high horse. Almost daily we’re smearing wood stain, varnish, flooring underlay and joint compound all over. I now know that plenty more badness lurks in every Home Depot shopping bag. Wolverton mentions the following DIY ingredients that release VOCs (page 10):

• Caulking (including formaldehyde, xylene, benzene and alcohols).
• Ditto for various floor coverings, likely including laminate and vinyl.
• Plywood and particleboard – not great!
• Carpeting is a particularly bad contributor to indoor air pollution, especially as it breaks down and fibers become airborne (page 13).

“Many people spend up to 90% of their time indoors” (page 7).

I found that an astounding number until I remembered: Vancouver in February – I never go outside.

Tone: While introductory pages have a tinge of fear-mongering, he knows you’ll be saying “yea, yea, yea” to a problem you can’t see. On the whole he’s an avuncular scientist who knows his stuff and wants to help your home and health.

Premise: Using Wolverton’s example – just as you protect your skin with sunscreen, you should minimize and prevent a harmful indoor environment.

The meat: 50x houseplants are each assessed on their “ability to remove chemical vapours”, their ease of care and virility, plus rate of transpiration. Each plant has a page with its health benefits explained, then a bulleted sidebar with care tips (making it very easy to know whether it suits you and your home), and 2 large photos (an entire plant, and a large full-page close-up of its leaves).

“Ivy is particularly effective at removing formaldehyde” (page 50).

Especially useful detail in an apartment with only two windows facing one direction — each plant’s preferred light level! It’s an easy shopping guide to better set up a healthier home or office, or maybe help a friend equip a nursery? For us and our few windows – rubber plant, Golden pothos, chinese evergreen, dracaena warneckei, parlor palm and heart-leaf philodendron come best recommended.

Clear winner: Though this book is 14 years old, it remains #1 on Amazon for respiratory health.

“A [large] areca palm transpires 1 litre of water every 24 hours” (page 40).

• 50-60% fewer: Airborne moulds and bacteria in a plant-filled room (page 26).
• Coolest plant I’ve never seen: prayer plant (below)

• Random recollection: Seeing a photo (and learning the name) of an urn plant (below)… then remembering I once tried to scratch off the waxy silver coating of my grandmother’s… “to clean it”.

• First purchase in next home with sunny windows: dwarf banana
• Interesting: Learning the names for things I’ve killed in the past.
• Pretty AND useful: My moth orchid removes xylene from the air.

 Covers Canada? Even better – it explains specifically which plants will need extra attention in dry environments. I hear you Prairie folk have winter-time trouble with static?

1 reason to read it? Winter’s coming, you’re headed inside to hibernate. Ideal to read before plant-shopping, knowing exacly what you’re buying, why, and what you’re going to do with it once home.

Conclusion: Game-changer. Widely recommend this book. Give to expecting parents decorating nurseries, anyone coming anywhere near vinyl tile adhesive, or as a house-warming present (+ plant in nice pot). (But read it yourself first!)

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Opryland Hotel (cited in the book as having great indoor air quality) photos c/o BoogaFrito and |vvaldzen|, prayer plant photo c/o Drew Avery, urn plant photo c/o Cliff1066, and orchid photo c/o alantankenghoe via Flickr Creative Commons.