The company Neoplants has been in the news a lot lately because they promoted a new genetically engineered houseplant that is claimed to clean the air in your home. In their Neo Px white paper they say, “we created a bioengineered plant system that can effectively fight air pollution”.
What is the true story?
Key Takeaways
- GMO pothos houseplants have been developed that are more efficient than non-GMO plants at removing VOCs.
- The new GMO plants are not yet efficient enough to make a difference in your home.
House Plants Do Not Clean the Air in Your Home
I started studying this more than 10 years ago and found that all of the claims for houseplants cleaning the air in our homes were false. The original NASA study that everyone uses to claim that they do clean our air, never make such a claim, nor did it ever test their ability to clean the air in our home. You can read the full story in Do Plants Purify the Air in Your Home?
Can GMO Houseplants Clean the Air in Our Home?
Why would GMO houseplants be any different?
Plants, unlike animals, tend to have multiple copies of a single gene and using genetic engineering it is possible to add extra copies of a gene. Plants naturally have genes that produce enzymes that degrade VOCs (volatile organic compounds).
If we take a plant and increase the number of genes for degrading VOCs, that plant should become more effective at removing VOCs from the air.
This is a simplistic description of a process that is more complex, but it should be possible to make GMO plants that are better at cleaning our air than normal houseplants. That is the theory. But does it actually work in real life?
A few years ago I asked gardeners if they would use a GMO plants for cleaning their air, and the majority said yes.
The First Working GMO Houseplant
The first GMO houseplant for purifying air was developed by Dr. Stuart E. Strand, at the University of Washington. His work was published in 2019 and I have been in touch with him since then.
His team developed a GMO pothos ivy ( Epipremnum aureum) that was more effective at removing VOCs from the air.
In our conversation Dr. Strand confirmed my earlier conclusions that regular houseplants don’t purify the air in our homes. Over the next couple of years he also provided information about the effectiveness of his new GMO plants. Although they were more efficient than un-modified pothos ivy, the new plants have a limited effect in a normal room because of its size relative to the size of the plant.
In order for a plant to efficiently clean a room they need to “touch” all of the air molecules in a room. Without close contact they can’t remove the pollutants.
To solve this problem the team developed a specialized growth chamber that moves air past the plant, exposing it to a much larger volume of air. This made the plant more efficient and this system is now marketed by Origen Air.
Are these systems effective at removing VOCs? There has been no real world testing so far. The marketing efforts seem to focus more on style than function.
Enter Neoplants
Neoplants is a newer company located in Paris and I was following them even before they announced a product. Their initial goal was to develop a GMO pothos that was more efficient than the regular one.
In 2023, they announced the release of a limited run of a plant called Neo P1. It is not clear what happened to that offering, but the company has recently told me that the plant is being “re-engineered” and is not available right now. As far as I can tell none have been shipped.
In their marketing, the CEO claims that they developed the worlds first bioengineered houseplant for removing VOCs, but the reality is that Dr. Strands work preceded their efforts by several years.
This year they announced the release of Neo Px, the first bioengineered “plant system”. This uses a special pot, a regular non-engineered pothos (Marble Queen) and special microbe tablets called Power Drops.
To understand the role of microbes its important to revisit the original NASA study. It found that the microbes in the soil were much more efficient at removing VOCs than any of the plants that were tested. So in theory a combination of regular pothos plus GMO microbes could be more effective than a GMO pothos.
The special pot is called the “shell”. It is a pot with extra holes in the bottom to allow more air to move past the root system, thereby exposing microbes to more air. The company has not released any data to validate it effectiveness.
Does the Neo P1 GMO Pothos Purify Air?
The company has issued a Neo P1 White Paper that contains background information as well as testing results.
This chart, from the report, shows that toluene levels were lower with NeoP1 (green line) than with a regular pothos. Toluene is one of the main VOCs in air.
The toluene CADR (clean air delivery rate) of Neo P1 was 1.33 compared to the regular plant with a value of 0.14 (see chart below), an impressive 9.5X increase. For formaldehyde they found a 5.8X increase.
Those are impressive numbers, but if the goal is to show these plants work to reduce pollution in a home, the testing is flawed.
The first issue is with the test chamber. As with the NASA study, they used a very small container (35L). Testing a plant in a small chamber skews the data, producing higher values than in a regular home.
The second problem is that they injected huge amounts of VOC to see a measurable change. Normal homes have toluene values of 1 to 6 ppb. The test started with a value of 750 ppb. The Neo P1 reduced this value to 600 ppb. By flooding the system with high levels of toluene you are more likely to see a statistically significant drop.
This test tells us nothing about how these plants would perform in a normal home. It is not only possible, but expected, that a single plant in a normal room will have zero effect on VOC levels.
Does the Neo Px System Purify Air?
The details of this system can be found in the Neo Px White paper.
The microbes are bioengineered Pseudomonas putida, which are claimed to be much more efficient than the standard species.
Neoplants says, “This strain is classified as a rhizosphere bacterium, thriving in the soil around and within plant roots, creating a symbiotic relationship with its host plant.” They also say that the bacteria should be replaced every month. That seems like a contradiction. If the bacteria form a symbiotic relationship with the plant, why would they need to be replaced?
To test Neo Px, the same testing setup was used as for Neo P1, except that the starting toluene level was only 120 ppb.
“The CADR/weight for Neo Px is 1.33 for Neo Px and 0.14 for Epipremnum aureum” – that is a direct quote. Notice that the numbers are identical to the results for Neo P1!
They also provided the following chart to show the change in Toluene levels over time. Note that the axis values are different than the chart above, but the data is identical. They are absolutely the same lines!
Either the company is being deceptive or they are very incompetent. But the results for Neo P1 and Neo Px can’t be identical.
This test has the same design flaw as the previous one. The chamber is too small and the toluene levels are too high. The results tell us nothing about how these plants will perform in your home.
Slight of Hand Marketing
Neoplants claims that “Neo Px is thirty times higher than the average CADR of other houseplants commonly recognized for their air-purifying properties”.
They get this number by including the peace lily, spider plant and snake plant in the calculations, which have values of almost zero, and claim they are “recognized for their air-purifying properties”. No they are not. No one who has an understanding of this topic makes such claims. In fact they clearly do NOT purify the air. Adding them in the calculation skews the data and makes their product look better than it really is. Thanks to Pretty in Green for pointing this out.
If we use the Neoplants data and leave out the extra plants we find that the Neo Px system is only 9.5X better than a regular pothos as far as CADR goes – not 30X. As I have already pointed out, this data is suspect since it is the identical same values as for their Neo P1 results.
The results are reported as the CADR, the Clean Air Delivery Rate. What is this? This is a measurement used to evaluate filters that remove particulate mater from the air. Wikipedia clearly says, “The measurement only applies to particulate matter, not to gases“. This value tells us nothing about the systems ability to remove VOC gases.
Why do they use CADR? I think they use it because it gives them a high value to use in the hopes of confusing and misleading customers.
How efficient is the Neo Px? Lets use their data for toluene. The baseline value was 120 pbb, which was reduced to 110 pbb for the regular pothos and 90 ppb for the Neo Px system. So the Neo Px system is 3X better than a standard pothos.
They claim 30X when their data actually shows a 3X improvement. Since their presented data clearly has mistakes in it, we can’t even be sure of that value.
Price tag $179 plus $160/year (after the first 6 months) for special microbes – why not just buy three regular plants for $30? They would perform just as well.
Do GMO Houseplants Clean the Air in our Home?
GMO houseplants will remove VOCs better than non-engineered plants. But that does not mean they will clean your air.
The problem that remains that that plants are extremely inefficient at removing VOCs, in part do to their small size. Even if we triple their efficiency, three times zero is still zero.
None of the above GMO plants or systems have provided proof that they work. Save your money.
