Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1877 — Plants do Not Poison the Air. [ARTICLE]

Plants do Not Poison the Air.

“ Thebe is a notion prevalent that the presence of growing plants in the sleeping or living room is detrimental to a healthy atmosphere by their giving out poisonous carbonic acid gas in the night time. The investigations of chemists demonstrate that growing plants do exhale an almost imperceptible quantity of carbonic acid gas, which, in very small proportions, is necessary in the air we breathe. They also show that the quantity 'exhaled at night is but the one-sixteenth part of what the same plant absorb from the atmosphere during the day and convert into nearly its own weight of oxygen, thus changing a poisonous gas that derives its Origin from various sources, into one of the principal elements of pure air. If carbonic acid gas is emitted from plants in dangerous quantities, it certainly would exist largely in the night atmosphere of a close greenhouse heated to a tropical temperature, and crowded from floor to rafter with rank vegetation. Yet, in my experience, I have never known the slightest ill effects to be realized from night work in greenhouses; neither in cases that have frequently occurred of workmen making the warm greenhouses their sleeping auartere of a night, and even for an enre winter, which, to u>y satisfaction, affords practical proof that the notion is a fallacy; and the fact that perhaps no healthier class of men can be found than greenhouse operators, who work gconstantly in an atmosphere where plants are growing, would prove instead that living plants exert a beneficial Influence upon the air we breathe.” Those who have heretofore dreaded to keep plants in their houses on account of their supposed Tli effects, may rest at ease, and even furnish their sleeping-rooms wife flowers. —Home Kloriet.