[HN Gopher] Engineered 'Superplant' Cleans Indoor Air Like 30 Re...
___________________________________________________________________
Engineered 'Superplant' Cleans Indoor Air Like 30 Regular Plants
Author : andsoitis
Score : 174 points
Date : 2022-11-05 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (singularityhub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (singularityhub.com)
| tripletao wrote:
| This is why regulation of GMOs needs to be structured in terms of
| risk/benefit instead of safety alone. I absolutely support
| genetic modification of major calorie crops, and I think there's
| a strong case that the environmental risk from such modifications
| is smaller than the risk of alternative paths (spray more
| chemical pesticides, clear more land, etc.) to achieve the same
| total yields.
|
| The benefit here is very close to zero, though; one wild-type
| pothos won't affect indoor air quality in any way known to be
| significant to human health, and neither will thirty. We've
| already got escaped transgenic GloFish in Brazilian streams;
| those haven't caused any significant harm yet, but I'd rather we
| stopped rolling the dice before something does.
| c7b wrote:
| I suppose the plant could mate and procreate with regular Pothos
| plants? I'm wondering what the implications would be if that
| happens in the wild, ie those special genes spreading further.
| tripletao wrote:
| Pothos naturally almost never flowers; it's propagated mostly
| vegetatively both by humans and in the wild. That decreases the
| risk, though I still consider the concept reckless given the
| lack of significant benefit. They apparently haven't yet
| received the USDA approval necessary to sell their GMO, though
| I'd guess that under current regulations they will.
| alexmorenobaeza wrote:
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Now do it with trees.
| kodah wrote:
| I'm a bit skeptical of needing a "special pot" and adding some
| bits to support a microbiome. My partner got me into pothos and
| we've been growing our collection ever since. They're very easy
| to maintain and require very little attention as long as you give
| them some light and keep them away from drafts.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I've heard pathos described as "thriving on neglect". When WFH
| hit I imagined empty offices choked and overgrown by pathos
| allowed to run amock. (Having said that I'm aware they need
| watered.)
|
| Edit: Spelling.
| blep_ wrote:
| > they need watered
|
| Until they grow into the plumbing.
| permo-w wrote:
| is it not spelled "amok"?
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| If it does actually require regular maintenance of a proprietary
| microbiom then, eh, it doesn't clean the air like 30 regular
| plants; it's more like a subscription service for clean air that
| comes with a plant.
|
| Still cool though.
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| CAaaS+P is the business model of the future.
| agilob wrote:
| Plant as a service :(
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| This is not the solarpunk future of my dreams. I self-host
| my plants. My plants are on-prem bare-dirt.
| faddypaddy34 wrote:
| As they should be.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What happens when you need to go out of town for an
| extended period? If it was just another ${X}aaS, you
| could temporarily suspend those plant instances and avoid
| the charges. Their work would be unused during that
| period anyway, so why pay for it? On-prem would still
| continue to accrue those charges. Also, what happens if
| you have your large extended family over for the
| holidays? Your on-prem plants would be unable to handle
| the load and start returning 504 type errors. With
| ${X}aaS you could just spin up a few more instances or
| even upgrade to larger instance types. Once the family
| holiday nightmare is over, you just spin them down again.
| agilob wrote:
| > Their work would be unused during that period anyway,
| so why pay for it?
|
| should people in Silesia or Dheli pay triple price of
| London, because air pollution is bigger problem there, so
| cleaning air has more value?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sure, why shouldn't they be subjected to spot pricing
| too?
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| Should is a weird word here, they will. It's a market
| question not a morality question.
| andsoitis wrote:
| And IP-unemcumbered.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Unless you use Monsanto seeds
| kibibyte wrote:
| Plant subscription boxes are a thing, so we're not _that_
| far off.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Yeah that bit feels weird. It's designed to require less water
| than normal, I assume because many forget to water their plant.
| It makes sense, given the cost. You can't very well have people
| accidentally killing an expensive plant. But they somehow
| expect people who can't remember to water to provide the same
| plant with a sprinkle of bacteria once a month?
|
| I am also worried about proprietary plants, I don't know, maybe
| you can make cuttings? But yeah, still really cool.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But it's NASA. They are not thinking about forgetful plant
| owner on earth that needs help. NASA wants to scrub air in
| spaaaaace, or on other planets located in spaaaace.
|
| We just want to use it on earth so we can show how cool we
| are that we have something from NASA while your "other"
| friends have Dyson gear.
| burke wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's just the typical watering requirements
| of pothos. It's an extremely neglect-tolerant houseplant.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| There's no information that I could find about the rate of
| removing volatile organic compounds. I suspect adequate
| ventilation along with normal filter system to remove particulate
| matter is still the best bet.
|
| Of course, the first step regarding volatile organic compounds
| would be to test using an air quality monitor that can detect
| VOCs to see if you actually have a problem.
| vasco wrote:
| I really doubt a passive plant can get even close to an active
| air purifier machine with HEPA filters. This sounds like it'll do
| great with the "but it's natural" crowd though.
| cinntaile wrote:
| They're not claiming it does either. They're claiming their
| engineered plant cleans the air like 30 normal plants.
| syspec wrote:
| ...in mice! Oh wait nevermind.
| WillAdams wrote:
| There is a book on this:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/308235.How_to_Grow_Fresh...
| deegles wrote:
| In 2019 I emailed a professor at UW working on a similar project
| asking for a cutting of their genetically engineered pothos but
| they said they couldn't send me one because they were still
| looking for partners for regulatory approval and
| commercialization. Glad to see someone did it!
| eachro wrote:
| what's the tradeoff here? what are the downsides of these
| superplants?
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| I would assume functionality. To me this reads as a funding
| round to kickstart further development. I want some numbers,
| because my initial assumption is that 30x a regular plant is
| still essentially zero overall impact. The longterm goal would
| be to breed a plant that has 300x or 3000x effectiveness. I
| don't see anything wrong with this, by the way. Prototypes
| funding future success is an effective business model. I just
| suspect that this prototype doesn't really do anything other
| than present exciting possibilities for the future in a really
| nice package.
| googlryas wrote:
| Better than nothing, but the level that plants "clean the air" is
| entirely negligible. Every time you open the door, enough air
| enters your house where you would need to dedicate an entire room
| of plants for multiple days to clean that air.
|
| Just get a filter that can filter VOCs if you have that kind of
| concern. And then add plants as you wish to make you happy.
| zug_zug wrote:
| What do you mean? The air outside your house is almost
| certainly much lower in VOCs than inside.
| googlryas wrote:
| Really depends where you live, but I suspect for most of the
| globe that is true(though not necessarily for most of the
| population).
|
| In that case, just open the windows! Or use a heat exchanger
| if the temp isn't reasonable outside.
|
| But, I was imagining a house sealed up with perfectly clean
| air and then "dirty" outside air getting in
| hinkley wrote:
| If you live somewhere that doesn't, the better investment
| is in relocating, or public pressure to fix the problem.
| D13Fd wrote:
| What do _you_ mean? The outside air is also typically an
| unwanted temperature (although heat exchangers can mitigate
| that) and may contain allergens or particulates from smoke or
| exhaust.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Ever been in a place where you have a room totally barren of
| plants, and then able to walk into a room with plants? Which
| room do you feel better in? Whether it is the air cleaning or
| not, rooms with plants just feel so much better to me than the
| sterile feeling of no plants.
| googlryas wrote:
| Sure, that's why I finished my post with "And then add plants
| as you wish to make you happy."
| Thiez wrote:
| You don't need an engineered superplant for that feeling,
| though.
| dinvlad wrote:
| I wonder how that compares just to some baggies with activated
| carbon.
| jrockway wrote:
| Get a fan and a furnace filter and you have a top-of-the-line
| air purifier.
| silisili wrote:
| They are generally cheap enough now that it's probably not
| worth the effort. I think my last 2 cost 35 a piece, and
| came with extra filters and such.
|
| I used to think they were kinda useless until I had tile
| ripped up. The neverending dust was driving my wife insane.
| On a whim, bought a couple purifiers and it's cut the dust
| down by at least 90%.
| thecoppinger wrote:
| Any chance you could provide a link to an example
| product? Air purifiers seem pretty expensive, but I
| expect that might be due to my location
| silisili wrote:
| I bought these for 34.99 last month, but it appears to be
| gone now.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N4IRIWK
|
| If you're looking for more features and a more known
| brand, Costco has these for 99, which is a pretty good
| deal considering their size and that they come with all
| extra filters.
|
| https://www.costco.com/winix-true-hepa-4-stage-air-
| purifier-...
| MengerSponge wrote:
| https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/
| googlryas wrote:
| Not exactly. As I understand it furnace filters will just
| filter out particulate matter which is measured on the
| order of micron. It doesn't really do much for VOCs, which
| are measured on the order of picometers(0.2 microns =
| 200,000 picometers).
|
| You need another filter like activated charcoal which works
| differently than particulate filters (adsorption vs merely
| trapping particles in a winding path)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| VOCs are nanometer scale. A rough estimate for atomic
| bond length in organic compounds is .15 nanometers. CO2,
| which should be smaller than basically any VOC, is half a
| nanometer across.
| jrockway wrote:
| The comment I'm replying to says "I wonder how a bag of
| charcoal would do". I assume you'd add that to my list of
| components.
| schainks wrote:
| It only takes three shoulder height plants (of a couple widely-
| available species) to recycle the CO2 produced by an adult
| human.
|
| Relevant talk:
| https://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_how_to_grow_fresh_ai...
| googlryas wrote:
| Sure but this is about VOCs, not CO2, though lowering CO2
| levels indoors certainly isn't a bad thing, especially if
| you're in a small room without ventilation.
| alar44 wrote:
| Not even close. A human produces 2.5 lbs of CO2 per day. A
| full grown tree absorbs 50 lbs _per year_.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is not even remotely true.
|
| Carbon in, carbon out. In order for plants to balance that
| equation they have to grow about a pound of dry mass per day.
| There's a reason the space station doesn't just have a few
| plants up there instead of an advanced system to scrub and
| recycle air.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The numbers don't check out. It looks like he is using a
| weird definition of recycle the CO2 produced by an adult
| human.
|
| A normal person need about 2000 kcalories per day. That's
| approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) of sugar. Eating only
| sugar is bad, but most carbohydrates and proteins have a
| similar kcalories to weight ratio.
|
| If the plant absorbs all the CO2 produced by the person, it
| must rebuild all that sugar back (and store it as cellulose,
| or starch or even proteins, but again all have a very similar
| similar kcalories to weight ratio.) So the plant must grow
| approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) per day.
|
| That is like 15kg (30 pounds) per month, that is a weigh of a
| small child. Or like 150kg (300 pounds) per year that is the
| weight of one or two adults. Plant's don't grow so much.
| (Note that you can reduce the weight to one half is the plant
| only makes oil instead of as cellulose, or starch or even
| proteins, but it still too high.)
|
| Edit: Self nitpicking: About the reduction of weigh using
| oil, I used calories per gram instead of carbon per gram.
|
| Oversimplifiying: In sugar the simplified unit is COH2, that
| has one carbon per 12+16+2=30 atomic units. In oil, the
| simplified unit is CH2 that has one carbon every 12+2=14
| atomic units. So the ratio is aproximately 30/14=2.14 instead
| of the calories ratio that is 9/4=2.5. Both are very similar,
| so the end remark is still correct. I'm not sure if it's a
| coincidence or if I think hard enough about energy per atomic
| bound it get obvious.
|
| Proteins are harder, because amino acids are more diverse. I
| left the exact calculation for someone else, but as a rough
| simplification let's use achain of valine. The building block
| is C5ONH9 that is a carbon for every (12*5+16+14+9)/5=19.8
| atomic units, so it's something in between. Anyway, don't
| expect your plant to make too much proteins. Even soy
| overdosed with fertilizer has only like a 15% of proteins.
| lazide wrote:
| Don't forget that the plant would also need to receive
| enough insolation to do this AFTER inefficiencies in
| photosynthesis. As photosynthesis is only 11% efficient,
| and conversion to sugars is going to be only a partial
| fraction of that due to needs of the plants to support
| their own health and growth, we're talking a VERY large
| amount of insolation. A completely impractical amount to
| have indoors, frankly.
|
| 2000 kcal == 2.3kwh.
|
| If we assume the plant manages to put half of it's total
| photosynthesis output into sugar (very generous), and hits
| maximum theoretical photosynthetic rates, 5.5% of sunlight
| would be converted.
|
| A peak sun hour is 1kw per square meter. 5.5% of that is 50
| watts.
|
| You'd need 46 square meters of peak sun for an hour to
| produce 2.3kwh worth of output, even assuming a lot of
| ideal output efficiencies.
|
| So yeah, total bullshit.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I used to have a Chinese woman working for me.
|
| I'm pretty sure she came from a privileged place, in Beijing.
|
| Anyway, she told me that they always had tea plants around her
| house in China. She said they smelled great, and "cleaned the
| air."
| Maursault wrote:
| $179?! What's the performance compared to $25 worth of furnace
| filter taped to box fan?
| jordemort wrote:
| Pothos is very easy to propagate in water. I bought one from Home
| Depot several years ago and now my office features 12 of them,
| all cut from the same plant (some are even second-generation
| clones)
| socialismisok wrote:
| Pothos are easy to grow and easy to propagate. One pothos could
| turn into 30 without a huge amount of effort.
|
| I kinda like the idea of living in a space with 30 pothos plants.
|
| I guess the engineered one would also be easy to propagate? Which
| raises an interesting question, after I buy one, can I just give
| away dozens of clones? Are there IP restrictions? Does the plant
| die without the special sauce bacteria?
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I have bought other houseplants (bromeliad hybrids, for one)
| that say they are patented and can't be propagated. I see that
| in theory that applies to individuals[1] but I am skeptical
| there's any kind of enforcement unless you're selling your
| pirated plants.
|
| 1: https://nwdistrict.ifas.ufl.edu/hort/2016/06/08/know-your-
| pa...
| hinkley wrote:
| The unspoken rule of the horticulture world is that hobbyists
| have a gift economy in "illegal" propagations. Over a longer
| time horizon the "gift economy" is bartering with credit. I
| give you some when times are good, I accept some after a pest
| infestation or a lousy house sitter.
|
| Only commercial growers license plant patents.
|
| I'm filling a fifth of an acre with purchased plants and it
| gets expensive quick, especially if you aren't very very
| patient. I'm already propagating cuttings of mostly natives
| and a few herbs to trade with others. Few can afford retail.
| seydor wrote:
| it's also a very invasive species. not eaten by animals it
| grows everywhere and loves to climb on trees where it can choke
| then
|
| > after I buy one, can I just give away dozens of clones
|
| I mean, it s going to be so popular that the company will have
| no way of stopping the IP thieves.
| Someone wrote:
| > I guess the engineered one would also be easy to propagate?
|
| Potentially, these plants can be sterile (https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno...)
|
| If they don't, you may have to pay the manufacturer a
| "technology use fee" to use the new plants. https://en.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise...:
|
| _"The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser 's
| intentionally growing genetically modified plants constituted
| "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells.
| By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it did. The Supreme
| Court also ruled 9-0 that Schmeiser did not have to pay
| Monsanto their technology use fee, damages or costs, as
| Schmeiser did not receive any benefit from the technology."_
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Then you have 30 plants to take care of and find space for. It
| would be basically impossible to stop you from propagating and
| giving away cutting if the plant can do that. All of that other
| stuff seems like extra cost to develop with questionable gains
| to sales.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Then you have 30 plants to take care of and find space for.
|
| Pothos are pretty much vines, so seems pretty easy to put the
| pot on a high surface and let them fall down or creep along,
| unless they're too structurally solid to do that?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I mean, I get it I have some pothos but also limited window
| space and shelf space. A 30x improvement in efficiency is
| compelling.
| missosoup wrote:
| Based on the OP post and the notion of a wait list for
| something that should be trivial to propagate as you
| mentioned, I'm guessing this whole thing is a $$/Month
| subscription to a proprietary variant of a common plant.
|
| "Just one Neo P1, as the company dubbed its initial product,
| can remove as much pollution from a home's air as 30 regular
| plants, the company says. Neo P1 was in development for four
| years, and is a bioengineered version of a common houseplant
| called Pothos."
|
| What does this even mean? What is 'pollution' in this claim?
| Just grow and happily propagate regular pothos which are
| wonderful plants, and if you need to filter your air... get
| certified filters?
| Oxidation wrote:
| Four years seems extremely fast for that. Every iteration
| you have to grow enough plant mass to test it. That must
| take weeks or months, even with the most optimal growing
| conditions.
|
| As for proprietary variants, some Pothos already come with
| tags saying that propagation is forbidden (which, to me, at
| least, means I will propagate the hell out of it even if I
| didn't really want to).
| agilob wrote:
| >after I buy one, can I just give away dozens of clones? Are
| there IP restrictions?
|
| The grapes, apples, chestnuts you buy at a supermarket are
| already IP-protected and propagation is already restricted or
| forbidden. Even some hybrid plants in IKEA have "propagation is
| against the law" labels, you are expected to kill any
| offspring.
|
| https://www.freshfruitportal.com/news/2022/11/02/italian-cou...
| jmspring wrote:
| Most Pothos are free to propagate. Things from Costa farms
| and some other places are things to look out for. IP on
| plants is an interesting thing. One popular plant in the
| recent past - Raven ZZs - was IP protected.
| driverdan wrote:
| VOCs shouldn't be found in significant amounts in any home. If
| you do have VOCs you need to do something about it, not get an
| overpriced plant.
| zeristor wrote:
| NASA had studies on plants to clean air, I have a copy of Bill
| Wolverton's book.
|
| Although no plants...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I wonder if anyone remembers an old experiment they did with
| houseplants and removing VOCs. They did the experiment right and
| had one plant have all leaves removed and it removed as much or
| more as the plant. The source of VOC removal? The potting soil
| and the life within. That's my memory of it.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Will mention another product of this ilk- that I own and am very
| happy with, full disclosure- called AlgenAir Aerium
|
| https://algenair.com/products/the-aerium-3-0?variant=4249193...
|
| Their algae is also claimed to be as effective as 25 regular
| plants.
|
| In reality, to have a noticeable/measurable impact on indoor air
| quality (specifically CO2), these products would still need to
| improve in absorbtion rates well beyond the 30x- probably to
| about 3000x.
|
| However, I like the Aerium for its visual and auditory qualities,
| irrespective of inefficient CO2 consumption. And real plants of
| course are also pleasing to many people.
|
| I have hopes that through genetic and other engineering products
| like the Pothos and the Aerium can get that 100-fold improvement
| over the next 10 years.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| That does look attractive, but getting some sticker shock at
| $225 initial + monthly installments. I could just as easily buy
| and kill several $5-$10 plants from Home Depot on a monthly
| basis. At least then I would get some variety.
| lob_it wrote:
| Where is the talk about adding small-scale hydrogen electrolysis
| with 21st century new construction to increase oxygen rates in
| inhabital areas inside a residence?
|
| https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/introduction-indo...
|
| The pollutant sources section identifies many everyday components
| in a residence.
|
| It is something similar to 98% of the population in the states
| having PFOA in thier blood in a 1998 study.
|
| https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/is-teflon-coating-safe
|
| I agree with many of the comments about the limited performance
| of passive plants to effectively remove contaminants with indoor
| air pollution.
|
| It looks like an estimate of 3.2 million people succumb to indoor
| air pollution annually on a global scale with lifestyle choices
| (or the lack of choice).
|
| https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-a...
|
| Environmental factors may actually make superplants a resonable
| addition for wellbeing (placebo effect), but lifestyle choices
| make inventorying 20th century convenience items and amenities
| part of a healthy spring cleaning routine (with updated
| information).
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| I would love to see some numbers and comparisons. As I said in a
| reply below, I suspect this is functionally ineffectual and that
| 30x the air cleaning of a regular plant is like saying 30x the
| intelligence of a regular plant.
|
| I suspect this is functioning as a shiny, attractive prototype to
| fund further research to develop a 300x or 3000x plant or
| something in that neighbourhood. No judgment from me for that,
| prototype funding a bigger plan is a cool business model. I'd
| just love to get some absolute data.
|
| EDIT: Reading a little bit about the NASA plant study[0] that I
| saw in the comments below. It says that it determined that you'd
| need 10-1000 plants per square meter (I don't understand this
| measurement? Wouldn't it be cubic meter?) to get the equivalent
| of outdoor-indoor air exchange. That's a really wide range, but
| does this mean you'd need 0.33...-33.33... of these neoplants to
| have the same impact? That's a lot of plants, but another 10x or
| 100x and you're actually getting somewhere in the range of
| reasonable. Counterpoint, I don't know what I'm talking about.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study
| bilsbie wrote:
| I thought I saw snake plants could do way better than that.
| agilob wrote:
| In real life snake plant wins, because it's the easier in
| maintenance. A common saying about it is "it thrives on
| neglect". I propagate them (have about 120 at my home right
| now, I even produced my own hybrid that's almost completely
| yellow) and give as gifts to many people, those who never had
| plants before and those who go for 2 months long holidays, so
| far no reports of any dead one. It's resistant to drought and
| overwatering, nothing bad happens when it has too much
| sunlight or not enough. Having 10 of them at home is work
| free, stress free compared to having 1 peace lily or other
| dracaenas.
| Nathanael_M wrote:
| You produced your own snake plant hybrid... That's got to
| be one of the most fascinating conversation starters I've
| ever heard. Do you think there's any merit in this concept
| of air cleaning super plants?
| agilob wrote:
| >Do you think there's any merit in this concept of air
| cleaning super plants?
|
| Snake plants and some aloe are quite easy to mutate at
| random. We're seeing more and more of them every year. I
| know I have 2 aloe hybrids that didn't exist 5 years ago,
| got them on ebay. This year, all supermarkets in UK and
| Poland are full of them, on social media and plantnet [1]
| we're arguing on what they should be called as each
| distributor gives them different names. 100s of photos
| are misidentified, which... kinda isn't uncommon and hard
| to blame anyone for it.
|
| I also have at least 20 subspecies of snake plants, 12 of
| them live in a single pot. The yellow one managed to
| create 3 individual offsprings, if they give yellow
| offspring again, I'm calling it a win and a new
| subspecies I _could potentnially_ sell. This is where
| things go hard. Snakeplant is hard to propagate a
| subspecies at scale. Fastest way is to cut a leaf and
| stick in water with any rooting hormone, but it doesn't
| keep mutations. Water propagation "reverts" mutations and
| produces the original specie. So, if you have a moonshine
| [2], cut a leaf and propagate in water, there are very
| high chances you end up with native [3], almost certain
| this will happen. You need at least 3-5 generations made
| in soil with identical mutation to make it more
| reproducible [4], that's a few years of waiting. Like
| this guy on reddit, had the plant for +10 years and spent
| 18 months propagating in water.
|
| Pothos, which the article is about, are a lot different,
| you can create a subspecies quite efficiently and make it
| a reproducible process. Even without any gardening
| knowledge you can learn about it from youtube or reddit
| comments. Pothos grows really fast and offspring created
| from a branch is identical to parent (some people have
| different experience that it reverts to the original
| variation - jade pothos, but it doesn't seem to be the
| rule?), so propagation is drastically easier. My guess it
| that's why the company mutated/fed pothos not snakeplants
| or peace lily. The most difficult answer is, how to make
| it mutate to be a more effective air cleaning plant and
| how to maintain it when the plant grows and hits our
| homes. Neo P1 achieved that by making the plant to work
| with additional 3rd party microbiome, which is a bit
| cheating, but not uncommon [5-6] for humans to manipulate
| how plants feed.
|
| I should be clear at the beginning, I propagate and
| create hybrids plants for fun, but know nothing about
| chemistry and genetics :)
|
| [1] https://plantnet.org/en/
|
| [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=moonshire+snake+plant
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracaena_trifasciata
|
| [4] https://old.reddit.com/r/proplifting/comments/uzn9xj/
| be_care...
|
| [5] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/plants-
| repeatedly-go...
|
| [6] https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2013/
| july/wo...
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| I must be some special kind of strange.. my roommate left
| me with some low maintenance plants on his way out and the
| snake plant is the _only_ one I 've managed to kill
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Passing air through/over baking soda also works faster/better
| than plants per square meter, particularly when dealing with
| VOCs.
| eric-hu wrote:
| I've always wondered if baking soda stored in a fridge for
| this purpose should not be used for cooking and baking
| thereafter.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Definitely not.
| pcl wrote:
| I always assumed that that was the case. Yuk!
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| Yeah that new flavor in your food would be everything.
| milkey_mouse wrote:
| Makes me wonder if this could be used intentionally, as
| in a recipe that calls for baking soda left next to
| certain aromatic ingredients to infuse it with flavor.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Eating it isn't going to kill you. But I think of it more as
| a backup kitchen fire extinguisher.
| hammock wrote:
| How to do this?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It is why a small box of baking soda has a pull-off side
| revealing a permeable membrane. You put it in the
| refrigerator to absorb odors, aka volatile organic
| compounds. Baking soda is alkaline, so it neutralizes
| acids. As most volatile organic compounds form acids in
| water, they are essentially absorbed by the baking soda in
| a moist environment.
|
| https://www.armandhammer.com/for-everything-soda/air-
| freshen...
| VectorLock wrote:
| Stick a box of Arm & Hammer in your central air ducts.
| hammock wrote:
| How does the air get into the box?
| thomaslangston wrote:
| They make A&H boxes that are designed to have sections
| torn off to let air through but not spill the baking
| soda.
| schainks wrote:
| Citation needed. This sounds interesting, though!
| layer8 wrote:
| See also https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-019-0175-9.
| esilverman wrote:
| feeeeeeed me seymour
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-05 23:00 UTC)