Some houseplants purify the air in the house, this instead is a real "green liver" that fights air pollution
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himSome houseplants already have the power to purify the air in the house, but with a modification to the DNA of this plant, researchers have created a real "green liver" to combat air pollution
A commune modified houseplant in its DNA it could greatly improve the quality of the air in our homes. To support him a new research aimed at understanding how to be able to lower the level of toxic substances in the environments we frequent every day.
The air in our apartments is unfortunately contaminated by various toxic substances that come out of building materials, furniture, fabrics, household products or washing machines, etc. It is already known that the plants we keep at home not only have a decorative function but can concretely help us improve air quality, reducing air pollution. But now new research, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, has taken it one step further.
A group of scientists has in fact managed to modify a simple houseplant, specifically a Pothos Ivy (Epipremnum aureum), by inserting a synthetic version of a rabbit gene (known as P450 2e1, or 2E1) into its DNA. Even humans actually carry this gene which lives in the liver and is activated when we drink alcohol to promote detoxification.
However, the study found that inserting this gene into a plant allows it to have what experts have called a sort of "green liver”, Thanks to which it can do some of the work of detoxifying the environment just like the liver does for our body.
Scientists were particularly interested in removing benzene and chloroform from indoor apartment air as they are known carcinogens. As the authors, led by Stuart Strand, a researcher at the University of Washington, stated, the modified plants:
"They had sufficient detoxifying activity against benzene and chloroform to suggest that biofilters using transgenic plants could remove VOCs from home air at useful rates."
The results were therefore very good: when tested in the laboratory, the genetically modified plant reduced the amount of chloroform in the air by 82% after 3 days and completely eliminated it by the sixth day. Benzene also decreased significantly, minus 75% after eight days. For comparison, the potential of the unmodified plants on the same pollutants was also evaluated and it was found that they had not been able to reduce them by any significant level.
An important detail that the authors of the study suggest is that these plants have been shown to be more effective with the regular movement of air on the leaves (like that of a fan); without it, the process is much slower, especially in an environment such as the home where toxins are much less concentrated than in the conditions recreated in the laboratory.
Therefore a fan and some genetically modified plants to keep in our apartments could be the simplest, and least expensive, solution to improve the air quality in the environments in which we live.
What do you think?
Fonte: Environmental Science and Technology/Treehugger.com
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