Looks like this has been happening for quite some time.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/12/19/new-houseplant-can-clean-air/

My guess is the experiments were originally targeted for space travel rather than homes. But I don't know.

Thanks for that Popmama.

I have done lots of research on the air-cleaning plants and had not seen the article you linked.

I have always joked that pothos will be the first plant on Mars.

We've known for many years that houseplants have the ability to remove quite a few toxic gases from the air. Not enough to do a lot of good, however, unless one incorporated a veritable forest of houseplants inside the home. I don't remember exactly when NASA first came out with its study about houseplants but I think it was in the 70s; it focused on the natural abilities of plants. That was pre-GMO science.

This experiment is very interesting and I can certainly see its application in space and other environments.....in the future. I think it's pretty exciting. And absolutely nothing to do with "marketing" in any manner whatsoever.

Plants can remove significant amounts of indoor pollutants. It is demonstrated they can do enough to do quite a lot of good. Reductions of 10-20% per day are typical. It's not just marketing.

Here are some of the original papers:

Wolverton, B.C., et al - Economic Botany 1984 - 'Foliage Plants for Removing Indoor Air Pollutants... '

Wolverton, B.C. , et al - Final Report of NASA Office of Commercial Programs 1989 - 'Interior Plants for Indoor Air-Pollution Abatement '

Wolverton, B.C. and Wolverton, J.D. - Journal of the Mississippi Academy of Sciences - 1993 - 'Plants and Soli Microorganisms: Removal of Formaldehyde, Xylene, and Ammonia from the Indoor Environment'

And then there have been many more rigorous studies to quantify how much effect plants can exert. Here the ones with the Koreans and Georgia researchers were eye-opening:

Yang, et al - HortScience 44 2009 - 'Screening Indoor Plants for Volatile Organic Pollutant Removal Efficiency'

And since there are many other studies on these lines.

The most interesting thing to me is that this pothos is just the first GMO to enhance the removal of a specific toxin; I bet in the future they will develop plants that are super efficient at multiple toxins.

All patented, of course.

Anyone who preregisteted got an email asking them to commit with an order for the second batch of propagations. The price? $179. For a pothos. These will be available in August of 2024. Maybe.

It may not surprise you to hear I did not order one.