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This advice is akin to saying you can improve your car's fuel economy by turning off the air conditioning - technically true, but with an effect size so tiny as
by rcthompson 8y ago
This advice is akin to saying you can improve your car's fuel economy by turning off the air conditioning - technically true, but with an effect size so tiny as to make it pointless. On average, a human would need several trees to produce enough oxygen to sustain them indefinitely. That probably works out to hundreds of house plants.
- patagonia 8y agoI was looking at it more from a point of supplementing the oxygen already in the atmosphere and, importantly, scrubbing my apartment air of some of these other molecules. I don’t think that “you’ll never have a fully functioning biosphere so this is dumb” is a legit counter argument.
- rcthompson 8y agoMy argument wasn't that it's impossible to fully support a human with oxygen from houseplants. The point is that the oxygen output of a single houseplant, or even a dozen of them, is negligible relative to the oxygen consumption of even a single human. That doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to own a houseplant, it just means that oxygen production isn't one of them.