How many house plants do you need to clean the air in a small flat?

There are lots of claims that house plants filter the air, but it turns out you need an awful lot of them to beat just opening the window, finds James Wong

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8 July 2020

By James Wong

10’000 Hours/Getty Images

AS YOU may know from my bio, I cohabit my small flat in London with more than 500 plants. I am therefore fascinated by the promise of a plethora of health benefits from gardening in the great indoors. With the current flowering of interest in the hobby, the internet is awash with handy advice for the “10 best air-purifying plants for the home” and species marketed as “Air so pure”.

Being a stats geek, I wanted to calculate exactly how much the concentration of plants in my apartment could clean the air. This turned out to be …