Yes and yes. The air is usually more dusty as you know during harvest and when it's been dry and windy, and the rain catches the dust and it falls with it. Once I actually saw it rain mud.

If you collect rainwater and leave it a few hours the mud should settle out of it. The only problem I could see with rainwater is if there was a lot of pollution and/or acid rain but we're ok for that so far.

Some houseplants are supposed to be sensitive to chlorine. Some plants hate hard water. Other than that, the only reason to use rainwater is that it's soft and it's free.

thanks Northspruce. it's even cheaper than bottled water! Joe

My tap water kills my house plants so they only get rain water or melted snow in winter if I run out of rain water. I try to give new tree seedlings and young trees rain water as well. I collect with rain barrels and then pump from the barrels into other containers for storage, okay, I sort of have a rain water hoarding issue. When it doesn't rain for a long time I get really mad, it rained last night, finally, so I am one happy person today.