[jfrankamp]

Wolverton understood these issues, his later designs centered around driving air past plants root systems to increase their uptake by orders of magnitude. Of course it is a myth that any normal houseplant is going to make a big difference, but I'm not so sure about a fan/roots system enhanced version.

One other modification was to include activated carbon, which muddies the water a bit but the idea generally speaking is that the bacterial colonies that are managed/symbiotes of the root system can assist with the uptake of VOCs. Activated carbon was supposed to be a temporary sink while that process takes place.

Now a fan enhanced plant that survives the airflow required is not trivial, and not what people think of when they think "this plant will help my house" but its not so simple as "this whole idea is stupid". The original and follow-on research is more interesting to me than the 'debunks' which are lazy in that they just take the easy case (add plants to clean your air!) and refute it.

The most amazing thing that some of the original research shows is that the bacterial colonies get _better_ at consuming household vocs, implication that the food source shapes those colonies specifics.

I'm not totally convinced, but I think its more interesting than the debunk articles allow for. I think it needs more study.