Abstract

4.3 million people die annually prematurely from illnesses related to indoor air pollution (WHO, 2014), and around 3 billion people are exposed daily to poor indoor air quality (Martin et al.,2021). The damaging health effects of air pollution, specifically particulate matter, stresses the need to know how plants can help reduce air pollutant levels. According to the National Academies of Sciences in 2016, humans spend the majority of their time indoors which makes it more likely that indoor PM exposure is a main contributor to the adverse health effects caused by PM exposure. The aim of this experiment was to investigate the effect basil and spider plants will have to reduce particulate matter levels in indoor spaces. Spider and basil plants were put next to a desktop computer for one week each while the average PM concentrations were measured daily for 15 minutes at an indoor testing site, PM was also measured for one week without any plants. It was then found that the basil and spider plants reduced the PM concentrations at the indoor site with the spider plants absorbing a greater percentage of the PM (64.60%) than the basil plants (28.90%). Although both spider and basil plants reduced the average PM concentrations, it is recommended to use spider plants to reduce average PM concentrations as it was more effective.