[HN Gopher] Engineered 'Superplant' Cleans Indoor Air Like 30 Re... ___________________________________________________________________ Engineered 'Superplant' Cleans Indoor Air Like 30 Regular Plants Author : andsoitis Score : 174 points Date : 2022-11-05 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (singularityhub.com) (TXT) w3m dump (singularityhub.com) | tripletao wrote: | This is why regulation of GMOs needs to be structured in terms of | risk/benefit instead of safety alone. I absolutely support | genetic modification of major calorie crops, and I think there's | a strong case that the environmental risk from such modifications | is smaller than the risk of alternative paths (spray more | chemical pesticides, clear more land, etc.) to achieve the same | total yields. | | The benefit here is very close to zero, though; one wild-type | pothos won't affect indoor air quality in any way known to be | significant to human health, and neither will thirty. We've | already got escaped transgenic GloFish in Brazilian streams; | those haven't caused any significant harm yet, but I'd rather we | stopped rolling the dice before something does. | c7b wrote: | I suppose the plant could mate and procreate with regular Pothos | plants? I'm wondering what the implications would be if that | happens in the wild, ie those special genes spreading further. | tripletao wrote: | Pothos naturally almost never flowers; it's propagated mostly | vegetatively both by humans and in the wild. That decreases the | risk, though I still consider the concept reckless given the | lack of significant benefit. They apparently haven't yet | received the USDA approval necessary to sell their GMO, though | I'd guess that under current regulations they will. | alexmorenobaeza wrote: | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | Now do it with trees. | kodah wrote: | I'm a bit skeptical of needing a "special pot" and adding some | bits to support a microbiome. My partner got me into pothos and | we've been growing our collection ever since. They're very easy | to maintain and require very little attention as long as you give | them some light and keep them away from drafts. | EvanAnderson wrote: | I've heard pathos described as "thriving on neglect". When WFH | hit I imagined empty offices choked and overgrown by pathos | allowed to run amock. (Having said that I'm aware they need | watered.) | | Edit: Spelling. | blep_ wrote: | > they need watered | | Until they grow into the plumbing. | permo-w wrote: | is it not spelled "amok"? | davidmurdoch wrote: | If it does actually require regular maintenance of a proprietary | microbiom then, eh, it doesn't clean the air like 30 regular | plants; it's more like a subscription service for clean air that | comes with a plant. | | Still cool though. | Nathanael_M wrote: | CAaaS+P is the business model of the future. | agilob wrote: | Plant as a service :( | Nathanael_M wrote: | This is not the solarpunk future of my dreams. I self-host | my plants. My plants are on-prem bare-dirt. | faddypaddy34 wrote: | As they should be. | dylan604 wrote: | What happens when you need to go out of town for an | extended period? If it was just another ${X}aaS, you | could temporarily suspend those plant instances and avoid | the charges. Their work would be unused during that | period anyway, so why pay for it? On-prem would still | continue to accrue those charges. Also, what happens if | you have your large extended family over for the | holidays? Your on-prem plants would be unable to handle | the load and start returning 504 type errors. With | ${X}aaS you could just spin up a few more instances or | even upgrade to larger instance types. Once the family | holiday nightmare is over, you just spin them down again. | agilob wrote: | > Their work would be unused during that period anyway, | so why pay for it? | | should people in Silesia or Dheli pay triple price of | London, because air pollution is bigger problem there, so | cleaning air has more value? | dylan604 wrote: | Sure, why shouldn't they be subjected to spot pricing | too? | LawTalkingGuy wrote: | Should is a weird word here, they will. It's a market | question not a morality question. | andsoitis wrote: | And IP-unemcumbered. | dylan604 wrote: | Unless you use Monsanto seeds | kibibyte wrote: | Plant subscription boxes are a thing, so we're not _that_ | far off. | mrweasel wrote: | Yeah that bit feels weird. It's designed to require less water | than normal, I assume because many forget to water their plant. | It makes sense, given the cost. You can't very well have people | accidentally killing an expensive plant. But they somehow | expect people who can't remember to water to provide the same | plant with a sprinkle of bacteria once a month? | | I am also worried about proprietary plants, I don't know, maybe | you can make cuttings? But yeah, still really cool. | dylan604 wrote: | But it's NASA. They are not thinking about forgetful plant | owner on earth that needs help. NASA wants to scrub air in | spaaaaace, or on other planets located in spaaaace. | | We just want to use it on earth so we can show how cool we | are that we have something from NASA while your "other" | friends have Dyson gear. | burke wrote: | I'm pretty sure that's just the typical watering requirements | of pothos. It's an extremely neglect-tolerant houseplant. | SapporoChris wrote: | There's no information that I could find about the rate of | removing volatile organic compounds. I suspect adequate | ventilation along with normal filter system to remove particulate | matter is still the best bet. | | Of course, the first step regarding volatile organic compounds | would be to test using an air quality monitor that can detect | VOCs to see if you actually have a problem. | vasco wrote: | I really doubt a passive plant can get even close to an active | air purifier machine with HEPA filters. This sounds like it'll do | great with the "but it's natural" crowd though. | cinntaile wrote: | They're not claiming it does either. They're claiming their | engineered plant cleans the air like 30 normal plants. | syspec wrote: | ...in mice! Oh wait nevermind. | WillAdams wrote: | There is a book on this: | | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/308235.How_to_Grow_Fresh... | deegles wrote: | In 2019 I emailed a professor at UW working on a similar project | asking for a cutting of their genetically engineered pothos but | they said they couldn't send me one because they were still | looking for partners for regulatory approval and | commercialization. Glad to see someone did it! | eachro wrote: | what's the tradeoff here? what are the downsides of these | superplants? | Nathanael_M wrote: | I would assume functionality. To me this reads as a funding | round to kickstart further development. I want some numbers, | because my initial assumption is that 30x a regular plant is | still essentially zero overall impact. The longterm goal would | be to breed a plant that has 300x or 3000x effectiveness. I | don't see anything wrong with this, by the way. Prototypes | funding future success is an effective business model. I just | suspect that this prototype doesn't really do anything other | than present exciting possibilities for the future in a really | nice package. | googlryas wrote: | Better than nothing, but the level that plants "clean the air" is | entirely negligible. Every time you open the door, enough air | enters your house where you would need to dedicate an entire room | of plants for multiple days to clean that air. | | Just get a filter that can filter VOCs if you have that kind of | concern. And then add plants as you wish to make you happy. | zug_zug wrote: | What do you mean? The air outside your house is almost | certainly much lower in VOCs than inside. | googlryas wrote: | Really depends where you live, but I suspect for most of the | globe that is true(though not necessarily for most of the | population). | | In that case, just open the windows! Or use a heat exchanger | if the temp isn't reasonable outside. | | But, I was imagining a house sealed up with perfectly clean | air and then "dirty" outside air getting in | hinkley wrote: | If you live somewhere that doesn't, the better investment | is in relocating, or public pressure to fix the problem. | D13Fd wrote: | What do _you_ mean? The outside air is also typically an | unwanted temperature (although heat exchangers can mitigate | that) and may contain allergens or particulates from smoke or | exhaust. | dylan604 wrote: | Ever been in a place where you have a room totally barren of | plants, and then able to walk into a room with plants? Which | room do you feel better in? Whether it is the air cleaning or | not, rooms with plants just feel so much better to me than the | sterile feeling of no plants. | googlryas wrote: | Sure, that's why I finished my post with "And then add plants | as you wish to make you happy." | Thiez wrote: | You don't need an engineered superplant for that feeling, | though. | dinvlad wrote: | I wonder how that compares just to some baggies with activated | carbon. | jrockway wrote: | Get a fan and a furnace filter and you have a top-of-the-line | air purifier. | silisili wrote: | They are generally cheap enough now that it's probably not | worth the effort. I think my last 2 cost 35 a piece, and | came with extra filters and such. | | I used to think they were kinda useless until I had tile | ripped up. The neverending dust was driving my wife insane. | On a whim, bought a couple purifiers and it's cut the dust | down by at least 90%. | thecoppinger wrote: | Any chance you could provide a link to an example | product? Air purifiers seem pretty expensive, but I | expect that might be due to my location | silisili wrote: | I bought these for 34.99 last month, but it appears to be | gone now. | | https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N4IRIWK | | If you're looking for more features and a more known | brand, Costco has these for 99, which is a pretty good | deal considering their size and that they come with all | extra filters. | | https://www.costco.com/winix-true-hepa-4-stage-air- | purifier-... | MengerSponge wrote: | https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/ | googlryas wrote: | Not exactly. As I understand it furnace filters will just | filter out particulate matter which is measured on the | order of micron. It doesn't really do much for VOCs, which | are measured on the order of picometers(0.2 microns = | 200,000 picometers). | | You need another filter like activated charcoal which works | differently than particulate filters (adsorption vs merely | trapping particles in a winding path) | Dylan16807 wrote: | VOCs are nanometer scale. A rough estimate for atomic | bond length in organic compounds is .15 nanometers. CO2, | which should be smaller than basically any VOC, is half a | nanometer across. | jrockway wrote: | The comment I'm replying to says "I wonder how a bag of | charcoal would do". I assume you'd add that to my list of | components. | schainks wrote: | It only takes three shoulder height plants (of a couple widely- | available species) to recycle the CO2 produced by an adult | human. | | Relevant talk: | https://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_how_to_grow_fresh_ai... | googlryas wrote: | Sure but this is about VOCs, not CO2, though lowering CO2 | levels indoors certainly isn't a bad thing, especially if | you're in a small room without ventilation. | alar44 wrote: | Not even close. A human produces 2.5 lbs of CO2 per day. A | full grown tree absorbs 50 lbs _per year_. | colechristensen wrote: | This is not even remotely true. | | Carbon in, carbon out. In order for plants to balance that | equation they have to grow about a pound of dry mass per day. | There's a reason the space station doesn't just have a few | plants up there instead of an advanced system to scrub and | recycle air. | gus_massa wrote: | The numbers don't check out. It looks like he is using a | weird definition of recycle the CO2 produced by an adult | human. | | A normal person need about 2000 kcalories per day. That's | approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) of sugar. Eating only | sugar is bad, but most carbohydrates and proteins have a | similar kcalories to weight ratio. | | If the plant absorbs all the CO2 produced by the person, it | must rebuild all that sugar back (and store it as cellulose, | or starch or even proteins, but again all have a very similar | similar kcalories to weight ratio.) So the plant must grow | approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) per day. | | That is like 15kg (30 pounds) per month, that is a weigh of a | small child. Or like 150kg (300 pounds) per year that is the | weight of one or two adults. Plant's don't grow so much. | (Note that you can reduce the weight to one half is the plant | only makes oil instead of as cellulose, or starch or even | proteins, but it still too high.) | | Edit: Self nitpicking: About the reduction of weigh using | oil, I used calories per gram instead of carbon per gram. | | Oversimplifiying: In sugar the simplified unit is COH2, that | has one carbon per 12+16+2=30 atomic units. In oil, the | simplified unit is CH2 that has one carbon every 12+2=14 | atomic units. So the ratio is aproximately 30/14=2.14 instead | of the calories ratio that is 9/4=2.5. Both are very similar, | so the end remark is still correct. I'm not sure if it's a | coincidence or if I think hard enough about energy per atomic | bound it get obvious. | | Proteins are harder, because amino acids are more diverse. I | left the exact calculation for someone else, but as a rough | simplification let's use achain of valine. The building block | is C5ONH9 that is a carbon for every (12*5+16+14+9)/5=19.8 | atomic units, so it's something in between. Anyway, don't | expect your plant to make too much proteins. Even soy | overdosed with fertilizer has only like a 15% of proteins. | lazide wrote: | Don't forget that the plant would also need to receive | enough insolation to do this AFTER inefficiencies in | photosynthesis. As photosynthesis is only 11% efficient, | and conversion to sugars is going to be only a partial | fraction of that due to needs of the plants to support | their own health and growth, we're talking a VERY large | amount of insolation. A completely impractical amount to | have indoors, frankly. | | 2000 kcal == 2.3kwh. | | If we assume the plant manages to put half of it's total | photosynthesis output into sugar (very generous), and hits | maximum theoretical photosynthetic rates, 5.5% of sunlight | would be converted. | | A peak sun hour is 1kw per square meter. 5.5% of that is 50 | watts. | | You'd need 46 square meters of peak sun for an hour to | produce 2.3kwh worth of output, even assuming a lot of | ideal output efficiencies. | | So yeah, total bullshit. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I used to have a Chinese woman working for me. | | I'm pretty sure she came from a privileged place, in Beijing. | | Anyway, she told me that they always had tea plants around her | house in China. She said they smelled great, and "cleaned the | air." | Maursault wrote: | $179?! What's the performance compared to $25 worth of furnace | filter taped to box fan? | jordemort wrote: | Pothos is very easy to propagate in water. I bought one from Home | Depot several years ago and now my office features 12 of them, | all cut from the same plant (some are even second-generation | clones) | socialismisok wrote: | Pothos are easy to grow and easy to propagate. One pothos could | turn into 30 without a huge amount of effort. | | I kinda like the idea of living in a space with 30 pothos plants. | | I guess the engineered one would also be easy to propagate? Which | raises an interesting question, after I buy one, can I just give | away dozens of clones? Are there IP restrictions? Does the plant | die without the special sauce bacteria? | blacksmith_tb wrote: | I have bought other houseplants (bromeliad hybrids, for one) | that say they are patented and can't be propagated. I see that | in theory that applies to individuals[1] but I am skeptical | there's any kind of enforcement unless you're selling your | pirated plants. | | 1: https://nwdistrict.ifas.ufl.edu/hort/2016/06/08/know-your- | pa... | hinkley wrote: | The unspoken rule of the horticulture world is that hobbyists | have a gift economy in "illegal" propagations. Over a longer | time horizon the "gift economy" is bartering with credit. I | give you some when times are good, I accept some after a pest | infestation or a lousy house sitter. | | Only commercial growers license plant patents. | | I'm filling a fifth of an acre with purchased plants and it | gets expensive quick, especially if you aren't very very | patient. I'm already propagating cuttings of mostly natives | and a few herbs to trade with others. Few can afford retail. | seydor wrote: | it's also a very invasive species. not eaten by animals it | grows everywhere and loves to climb on trees where it can choke | then | | > after I buy one, can I just give away dozens of clones | | I mean, it s going to be so popular that the company will have | no way of stopping the IP thieves. | Someone wrote: | > I guess the engineered one would also be easy to propagate? | | Potentially, these plants can be sterile (https://en.wikipedia. | org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno...) | | If they don't, you may have to pay the manufacturer a | "technology use fee" to use the new plants. https://en.wikipedi | a.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise...: | | _"The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser 's | intentionally growing genetically modified plants constituted | "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells. | By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it did. The Supreme | Court also ruled 9-0 that Schmeiser did not have to pay | Monsanto their technology use fee, damages or costs, as | Schmeiser did not receive any benefit from the technology."_ | ch4s3 wrote: | Then you have 30 plants to take care of and find space for. It | would be basically impossible to stop you from propagating and | giving away cutting if the plant can do that. All of that other | stuff seems like extra cost to develop with questionable gains | to sales. | masklinn wrote: | > Then you have 30 plants to take care of and find space for. | | Pothos are pretty much vines, so seems pretty easy to put the | pot on a high surface and let them fall down or creep along, | unless they're too structurally solid to do that? | ch4s3 wrote: | I mean, I get it I have some pothos but also limited window | space and shelf space. A 30x improvement in efficiency is | compelling. | missosoup wrote: | Based on the OP post and the notion of a wait list for | something that should be trivial to propagate as you | mentioned, I'm guessing this whole thing is a $$/Month | subscription to a proprietary variant of a common plant. | | "Just one Neo P1, as the company dubbed its initial product, | can remove as much pollution from a home's air as 30 regular | plants, the company says. Neo P1 was in development for four | years, and is a bioengineered version of a common houseplant | called Pothos." | | What does this even mean? What is 'pollution' in this claim? | Just grow and happily propagate regular pothos which are | wonderful plants, and if you need to filter your air... get | certified filters? | Oxidation wrote: | Four years seems extremely fast for that. Every iteration | you have to grow enough plant mass to test it. That must | take weeks or months, even with the most optimal growing | conditions. | | As for proprietary variants, some Pothos already come with | tags saying that propagation is forbidden (which, to me, at | least, means I will propagate the hell out of it even if I | didn't really want to). | agilob wrote: | >after I buy one, can I just give away dozens of clones? Are | there IP restrictions? | | The grapes, apples, chestnuts you buy at a supermarket are | already IP-protected and propagation is already restricted or | forbidden. Even some hybrid plants in IKEA have "propagation is | against the law" labels, you are expected to kill any | offspring. | | https://www.freshfruitportal.com/news/2022/11/02/italian-cou... | jmspring wrote: | Most Pothos are free to propagate. Things from Costa farms | and some other places are things to look out for. IP on | plants is an interesting thing. One popular plant in the | recent past - Raven ZZs - was IP protected. | driverdan wrote: | VOCs shouldn't be found in significant amounts in any home. If | you do have VOCs you need to do something about it, not get an | overpriced plant. | zeristor wrote: | NASA had studies on plants to clean air, I have a copy of Bill | Wolverton's book. | | Although no plants... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | I wonder if anyone remembers an old experiment they did with | houseplants and removing VOCs. They did the experiment right and | had one plant have all leaves removed and it removed as much or | more as the plant. The source of VOC removal? The potting soil | and the life within. That's my memory of it. | jonahbenton wrote: | Will mention another product of this ilk- that I own and am very | happy with, full disclosure- called AlgenAir Aerium | | https://algenair.com/products/the-aerium-3-0?variant=4249193... | | Their algae is also claimed to be as effective as 25 regular | plants. | | In reality, to have a noticeable/measurable impact on indoor air | quality (specifically CO2), these products would still need to | improve in absorbtion rates well beyond the 30x- probably to | about 3000x. | | However, I like the Aerium for its visual and auditory qualities, | irrespective of inefficient CO2 consumption. And real plants of | course are also pleasing to many people. | | I have hopes that through genetic and other engineering products | like the Pothos and the Aerium can get that 100-fold improvement | over the next 10 years. | fbdab103 wrote: | That does look attractive, but getting some sticker shock at | $225 initial + monthly installments. I could just as easily buy | and kill several $5-$10 plants from Home Depot on a monthly | basis. At least then I would get some variety. | lob_it wrote: | Where is the talk about adding small-scale hydrogen electrolysis | with 21st century new construction to increase oxygen rates in | inhabital areas inside a residence? | | https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/introduction-indo... | | The pollutant sources section identifies many everyday components | in a residence. | | It is something similar to 98% of the population in the states | having PFOA in thier blood in a 1998 study. | | https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/is-teflon-coating-safe | | I agree with many of the comments about the limited performance | of passive plants to effectively remove contaminants with indoor | air pollution. | | It looks like an estimate of 3.2 million people succumb to indoor | air pollution annually on a global scale with lifestyle choices | (or the lack of choice). | | https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-a... | | Environmental factors may actually make superplants a resonable | addition for wellbeing (placebo effect), but lifestyle choices | make inventorying 20th century convenience items and amenities | part of a healthy spring cleaning routine (with updated | information). | Nathanael_M wrote: | I would love to see some numbers and comparisons. As I said in a | reply below, I suspect this is functionally ineffectual and that | 30x the air cleaning of a regular plant is like saying 30x the | intelligence of a regular plant. | | I suspect this is functioning as a shiny, attractive prototype to | fund further research to develop a 300x or 3000x plant or | something in that neighbourhood. No judgment from me for that, | prototype funding a bigger plan is a cool business model. I'd | just love to get some absolute data. | | EDIT: Reading a little bit about the NASA plant study[0] that I | saw in the comments below. It says that it determined that you'd | need 10-1000 plants per square meter (I don't understand this | measurement? Wouldn't it be cubic meter?) to get the equivalent | of outdoor-indoor air exchange. That's a really wide range, but | does this mean you'd need 0.33...-33.33... of these neoplants to | have the same impact? That's a lot of plants, but another 10x or | 100x and you're actually getting somewhere in the range of | reasonable. Counterpoint, I don't know what I'm talking about. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study | bilsbie wrote: | I thought I saw snake plants could do way better than that. | agilob wrote: | In real life snake plant wins, because it's the easier in | maintenance. A common saying about it is "it thrives on | neglect". I propagate them (have about 120 at my home right | now, I even produced my own hybrid that's almost completely | yellow) and give as gifts to many people, those who never had | plants before and those who go for 2 months long holidays, so | far no reports of any dead one. It's resistant to drought and | overwatering, nothing bad happens when it has too much | sunlight or not enough. Having 10 of them at home is work | free, stress free compared to having 1 peace lily or other | dracaenas. | Nathanael_M wrote: | You produced your own snake plant hybrid... That's got to | be one of the most fascinating conversation starters I've | ever heard. Do you think there's any merit in this concept | of air cleaning super plants? | agilob wrote: | >Do you think there's any merit in this concept of air | cleaning super plants? | | Snake plants and some aloe are quite easy to mutate at | random. We're seeing more and more of them every year. I | know I have 2 aloe hybrids that didn't exist 5 years ago, | got them on ebay. This year, all supermarkets in UK and | Poland are full of them, on social media and plantnet [1] | we're arguing on what they should be called as each | distributor gives them different names. 100s of photos | are misidentified, which... kinda isn't uncommon and hard | to blame anyone for it. | | I also have at least 20 subspecies of snake plants, 12 of | them live in a single pot. The yellow one managed to | create 3 individual offsprings, if they give yellow | offspring again, I'm calling it a win and a new | subspecies I _could potentnially_ sell. This is where | things go hard. Snakeplant is hard to propagate a | subspecies at scale. Fastest way is to cut a leaf and | stick in water with any rooting hormone, but it doesn't | keep mutations. Water propagation "reverts" mutations and | produces the original specie. So, if you have a moonshine | [2], cut a leaf and propagate in water, there are very | high chances you end up with native [3], almost certain | this will happen. You need at least 3-5 generations made | in soil with identical mutation to make it more | reproducible [4], that's a few years of waiting. Like | this guy on reddit, had the plant for +10 years and spent | 18 months propagating in water. | | Pothos, which the article is about, are a lot different, | you can create a subspecies quite efficiently and make it | a reproducible process. Even without any gardening | knowledge you can learn about it from youtube or reddit | comments. Pothos grows really fast and offspring created | from a branch is identical to parent (some people have | different experience that it reverts to the original | variation - jade pothos, but it doesn't seem to be the | rule?), so propagation is drastically easier. My guess it | that's why the company mutated/fed pothos not snakeplants | or peace lily. The most difficult answer is, how to make | it mutate to be a more effective air cleaning plant and | how to maintain it when the plant grows and hits our | homes. Neo P1 achieved that by making the plant to work | with additional 3rd party microbiome, which is a bit | cheating, but not uncommon [5-6] for humans to manipulate | how plants feed. | | I should be clear at the beginning, I propagate and | create hybrids plants for fun, but know nothing about | chemistry and genetics :) | | [1] https://plantnet.org/en/ | | [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=moonshire+snake+plant | | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracaena_trifasciata | | [4] https://old.reddit.com/r/proplifting/comments/uzn9xj/ | be_care... | | [5] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/plants- | repeatedly-go... | | [6] https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2013/ | july/wo... | throwawaymaths wrote: | I must be some special kind of strange.. my roommate left | me with some low maintenance plants on his way out and the | snake plant is the _only_ one I 've managed to kill | sandworm101 wrote: | Passing air through/over baking soda also works faster/better | than plants per square meter, particularly when dealing with | VOCs. | eric-hu wrote: | I've always wondered if baking soda stored in a fridge for | this purpose should not be used for cooking and baking | thereafter. | ceejayoz wrote: | Definitely not. | pcl wrote: | I always assumed that that was the case. Yuk! | macjohnmcc wrote: | Yeah that new flavor in your food would be everything. | milkey_mouse wrote: | Makes me wonder if this could be used intentionally, as | in a recipe that calls for baking soda left next to | certain aromatic ingredients to infuse it with flavor. | sandworm101 wrote: | Eating it isn't going to kill you. But I think of it more as | a backup kitchen fire extinguisher. | hammock wrote: | How to do this? | sandworm101 wrote: | It is why a small box of baking soda has a pull-off side | revealing a permeable membrane. You put it in the | refrigerator to absorb odors, aka volatile organic | compounds. Baking soda is alkaline, so it neutralizes | acids. As most volatile organic compounds form acids in | water, they are essentially absorbed by the baking soda in | a moist environment. | | https://www.armandhammer.com/for-everything-soda/air- | freshen... | VectorLock wrote: | Stick a box of Arm & Hammer in your central air ducts. | hammock wrote: | How does the air get into the box? | thomaslangston wrote: | They make A&H boxes that are designed to have sections | torn off to let air through but not spill the baking | soda. | schainks wrote: | Citation needed. This sounds interesting, though! | layer8 wrote: | See also https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-019-0175-9. | esilverman wrote: | feeeeeeed me seymour ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-05 23:00 UTC)