Negative implications of indoor plants

Abstract

There have been various positive views regarding the benefits of indoor plants which play the role of green buildings over the past few years. Due to the rapid adoption of green buildings in the recent years, the employment of indoor plants has been commonly applied to buildings over the world. But in the recent years, efficiencies and negative implications of the indoor plants have been raised on many articles and websites, thus it is of importance to conduct a comprehensive study on the negative implications of indoor plants with regards to its benefits. This dissertation focuses on studying the negative implications that can arise due to the employment of indoor plants within an enclosed building and also the suitability of employing indoor plants within an enclosed building. Measurement of temperature, carbon dioxide and relative humidity is performed on two areas within a shopping mall, one with large quantities of indoor plants and another without any indoor plants. Comparison of the data trend will be used to justify the presence of any negative implications contributed by indoor plants as well as the positive benefits of such employment. The suitability of having indoor plants was then evaluated through the experiment and an estimate of energy cost was used to determine the energy implication of such employment. From the study it was found that space cooling by the employment of indoor plant appears to be redundant with the presence of air-conditioning system within an enclosed space due to the temperature controlled environment. Carbon dioxide removal indoor have also showed to be insignificant even with large quantity of plant. But on the other hand it contributes to addition energy cost due to the water moisture released by the plants which in turn have to be removed by the air-condition system’s humidifier. This is even more significant in the presence of large number of indoor plants. Another major impact of indoor plant would be regard to the mould development on the leaves of the indoor plants which exposes the danger of occupancy within the enclosed space to inhalations of mould spores and thus causing health problems which can be several in certain cases.