Kamal Meattle

Kamal Meattle is an Indian environmental activist and CEO of Paharpur Business Centre & Software Technology Incubator Park based in New Delhi, India. Meattle held a talk at TED 2009 entitled How to Grow Your Own Fresh Air.^[1]

After becoming allergic to New Delhi's polluted air in 1992, Meattle claimed to have discovered that three common houseplants could help reduce the pollutants in the air.^[2] The three plants and their properties are listed below:

• Works well in the day time
• Great for living areas
• One needs about 4 shoulder-high plants/person
• Needs to be put outdoors once every 3–4 months
• The leaves of the plant need to be wiped every day in Delhi and perhaps once a week in a cleaner city
• The soil used should be of vermi manure or use hydroponics

• Converts CO₂ into O₂ at night
• One requires about 6–8 such waist-high plants per person in the bedroom
• Leaves need to be wiped in the same way as the Areca Palm
• The soil used should be of vermi manure or use hydroponics

• Excellent for removing formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds
• Best grown using hydroponics

Meattle does not provide any numerical data to support his claims,^[3] nor is there third-party confirmation of the results, but at least one study calls the hypothesis into question.^[4]

• NASA Clean Air Study, where all three plants are listed