ReviewJournal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology2020
Potted plants do not improve indoor air quality: a review and analysis of reported VOC removal efficiencies.
Review in Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 85 citations in OpenAlex.
- Removal of Ethanol from Indoor Air byPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Integrating multivariate analysis and Air Pollution Tolerance Index (APTI) to evaluate four ornamental plants for sustainable indoor air phytoremediation.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Electrical Characterization of Indoor Air Quality in the Presence of Various Natural Air Purifiers.ACS omega · 2025Article
- Challenges and Perspectives on Photocatalytic Membrane Reactors for Volatile Organic Compounds Degradation and Nitrogen Oxides Treatment.Global challenges (Hoboken, NJ) · 2025Review
- Jingle bells, what are those smells? Indoor VOC emissions from a live Christmas tree.Indoor environments · 2024Article
- Measuring BVOC emissions released by tomato plants grown in a soilless integrated rooftop greenhouse.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Phytoremediation for the indoor environment: a state-of-the-art review.Re/views in environmental science and bio/technology · 2023Review
- Evaluating In Silico the Potential Health and Environmental Benefits of Houseplant Volatile Organic Compounds for an Emerging 'Indoor Forest Bathing' Approach.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Textile Washing Conveys SVOCs from Indoors to Outdoors: Application and Evaluation of a Residential Multimedia Model.Environmental science & technology · 2021Article
- Indoor Air Quality: Rethinking rules of building design strategies in post-pandemic architecture.Environmental research · 2021Review
- Transient Multimedia Model for Investigating the Influence of Indoor Human Activities on Exposure to SVOCs.Environmental science & technology · 2020Article
- Using Ambient Scent to Enhance Well-Being in the Multisensory Built Environment.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Potted plants have demonstrated abilities to remove airborne volatile organic compounds (VOC) in small, sealed chambers over timescales of many hours or days. Claims have subsequently been made suggesting that potted plants may reduce indoor VOC concentrations. These potted plant chamber studies reported outcomes using various metrics, often not directly applicable to contextualizing plants' impacts on indoor VOC loads. To assess potential impacts, 12 published studies of chamber experiments were reviewed, and 196 experimental results were translated into clean air delivery rates (CADR, m
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.