INDOOR PLANTS, OUR ENVIRONMENT AND HAPPINESS with Associate Professor Fraser Torpy at HAP22

foreign fantastic introduction thanks for that good to see you and good to see a great turnout at this time of day fantastic I'm Fraser I am the director of the plant's Environmental Quality research group at UTS we've spent the last 20 years researching all aspects of how plants can contribute to environmental health with a bit of a specialty in air quality um what I'm going to talk to you today is that and it's going to be a talk about engineering and at this juncture you're saying oh what about this that's something organizers are saying oh no we didn't get us for this why are we talking about engineering because we have now got to the point where the effect size is demonstrated by plants on happiness health Urban Environmental Quality justify their inclusion in engineering these are now Solutions they're not Concepts they're not ideas they are things that will fix our future probably the only thing that's going to fix our future spoiler alert it's what we work better with plants in simple terms when you put plants with people they're sick less often they have less illness symptoms they concentrate better yeah you could use a bit of that anyway less stress less depression and that results in more productivity and people are happier this has been absolutely shown over and it's become boring now there's so many papers that show this it's in it's somewhat intangible which has always been our great challenge in getting this message across because the engineers will say that's the evidence is now overwhelming um these are now facts the deal is that this is called attention restoration therapy and the whole deals about exposure to Nature where that comes about is because we as a species have spent two and a half million years evolving in environments where our resources have been supplied by plants okay we practice being with plants for two and a half million years and that's where we belong you can't concrete Us in for a hundred years and expect us to change that quickly Evolution's not that fast we are an organism that lives in planted environments the trouble is of course current workplaces don't take that into account they don't take into account how well we function they just want that simple simplistic probably efficiency so us our well-being is considered secondary to just making spaces efficient it's funny we don't like can eggs that are grown in cages anymore but what are workstations I mean come on that's just battery people laughs that was off the cuff that was interesting anyway um so you put us with plants as I've said in the previous slide and I'll show you again and makes us better organisms we we just operate more effectively and the thing is that the the number of plants you need to have an effect isn't that big and indoor plants make it I make a significant I'm happy now I think that's better they make a significantly large difference we we did this a little while ago we I'm not a psychologist we uh we got some top shelf psychology and we did a study on it University offices a little bit of stress and confusion going on I'm telling you um we took 60 offices we gave some plant just put plans about that sort of size not bad we gave half of the people plants we gave the other half no plants and we rotated them around look at the results when we'd use the standard techniques for measuring people's psychological Health the results are scary 30 reduction in confusion 37 reduction in tension anxiety at someone and so on 44 reduction anger and hostility my students love this stuff they sound less hostile four percent increase in Vigor that's disappointing this isn't isolated as I'll show on the next slide this this happens over and over and over again in the research so some what I'm trying to do here is overwhelm you with the number of studies okay so you can see on the left effect on productivity six to twelve percent and increased 10 to 14 38 15 percent same range is daylight okay you you know you're happier with daylight what did they do in the gulag when they put people in solitary they took away the Sun and that was the punishment okay effect size of plants is about the same as daylight so we have to ask the question do plants make us better or does a lack of plants make us worse okay so um ashes come along today did a study a couple of years ago to go and and go the next step and ask people whether they recognize this so she did a nationwide survey asked people if we'd use green Walls that's what we work on as a Target what are the what does this green wall make you feel more at peace go back two slides what does more at peace mean less confusion less anger less tension and so on so eighty percent of people recognize that what happened about other 20 of people interesting they were drunk stronger sense of community Pride interesting okay so people think about Community Pride in 2022 it's not something that is a big thing anymore people felt more Community Pride when they had plans it makes the world a better place now the big ticket item in uh in our circles is does this really matter people like them but are they willing to pay so that's that's an end point of our line of research will people pay for this and 92 percent in the survey said they're willing to pay for green Walls in their plants so don't effects are real physical effects psychological effects people recognize that people are willing to pay it's a good thing um that's plants but biophilia is more than plants but luckily plants come with baggage we did a study last year where we compared two roofs in brangaroo on identical buildings one had a green roof and solar panels the other one just had the solar panels and we went and counted the other species that turned up on those roofs and there's a graph with a little bar and a huge bar huge bars the green roof so that the green roof came with a lot of other species do they improve our mental health as well I don't know let's do the research partner with us fund us and we'll do the research here's a picture from the roof that's a picture that shows some tall and ugly City buildings you're not looking at the city buildings are you right you're looking at corvus coronities there right get the point that that moral organism has a lot of impact it makes us happy look at it it's great strep for a graciolina karawong you love it it's great it makes us happy not well studied yet animals and so on and so on from crested pigeon spotted turtle dove we even got rare species it's a blue banded bee does does the co this is on a green roof in barangaroo come on does having a rare species growing on a city building make you happy it improved your Wellness hoorah making prob talking to the converted this is a waste of time I'm going all right I'm just now the engineering bit that's a good bit um I call this physical effects I was going to call it quantitative effects I didn't know what to call it but I call it physical effects so so all this happiness and the biofilia and so on are there things that we can measure with instruments to show that plants make the world a better place um sick building syndrome and building related illness are big things right they they are one of the reasons why I only go to work two days a week because being in City buildings is in yeah not so good so sick building syndrome and building related illness are a range of well-documented pathologies that include a range of symptoms headaches eye nose and throat irritation dry cough itchy and dry skin disease and nausea you know these symptoms don't you yeah these are associated with according to the World Health Organization 30 of new buildings I got a feel and that's an underestimate yeah I got a feeling um the reason why this occurs is mainly being attributed to poor air quality so air pollution's big news in the environmental health space it's now recognizes the world's number one environmental health threat it's poor urban air quality around the world people are moving to cities it's a really major International thing that's happening people are be said all countries are becoming more urbanized and urban areas by their very nature are full of pollution yeah we're going to get AVS it's not going to stop the pollution that's another story cities have polluted air full stop gases carbon monoxide nitrogen oxide sulfur oxides volatile Organics all synthetics off gas right all synthetics you're sitting on a plastic chair it's off-gassing volatile Organics hydrocarbons most of which are categorized as class one carcinogens all Plastics off gas small quantities usually but they're constantly doing it through their lives particular matters dust the big killer kill 600 000 people here in China and it's it's here it's outside especially today with Bushfire smoke ozone bleaches your lungs bioparticles fungal spores and so on urban areas are full of air pollution indoor is becoming normal when we think of our environment we live in Australia Australians live indoors 85 to 90 percent of our time is spent indoors in Australia on average we've done the research 85 to 90 of our time is indoors our atmosphere is the indoor atmosphere that's our medium it's where we live so who cares about air pollution and obviously air pollution is much lower inside buildings isn't it it's not if the builders that we use in the system filter out a little bit of dust but that's all they do that air comes inside with half of its dust and all this off-gassing from all these synthetics means that indoor air pollution is when we measure it three to five times worse than Outdoors always indoor air pollution is worse than Outdoors it's been studied over and over and over again so you're breathing worse here than if you went outside on Harris Street the good news story back in the 80s in NASA was studying life support systems for outer space what they did was they built a chamber sealed it up put people inside it and health and safety's changed and they grew plants to produce oxygen to grow food and they removed air pollution 80s Plastics off gas like no tomorrow those the air quality in the chambers was remarkably clear and Bill Wolverton from NASA attributed that to the action of the plants and of course we've been continuing that research 35 years now all potted plants will remove all of the off-gassing chemicals all of them all potted plants do it some a little bit better than others but all plants do it um for these technical parties that then the interesting part is that it is the plant doesn't actually do that much it's actually the potting mix right bacteria live in the potting mix and they use the chemicals as food so things that give us cancer Benzene toluene bacteria eat that and make more bacteria that removed Benzene and toluene right so it compounds on itself um you can't take the plant out though I mean the first thing excuse me can I just have a pot of dirt well your sense of Aesthetics is different but anyway the plant keeps the whole thing going okay if it works for two weeks a pot of potting mix it works great it removes air pollution but only lasts two weeks the plant makes it last forever as long as the plant lasts there's a graph we'll have a graph don't you love a graph well I got more grass and graphs are good volatile organic compounds in University offices I'm going to walk over here and point at it because I don't like the laser you get the point officers with no plants shock and air quality three plants and six plants about the same and they're about the same as Outdoors so I said before indoor atmospheres are three to five times more polluted than Outdoors there's the graph that we measured in Harris Street Ultimo right put three to six plants in your office and it becomes as good as outside there you go simple we can do carbon dioxide as well you breathe out carbon dioxide right we all breathe it out there's a lot of people in this room we're all breathing out it's making the air stuffy and stuffiness that carbon dioxide is a big reason for what we find discomfort uncomfortable indoors um plants obviously eat photos carbon dioxide they photosynthesize that's what they do so they can remove that this is a room we put two one meter Square green Walls in the room 40 minutes 20 of the carbon dioxide is gone they do it for free there your breathing now has low carbon dioxide concentration and that wasn't free what happens is the air conditioning system's got a sensor it detects carbon dioxide when it gets too high when it gets too high it flushes the end or air with outdoor air to reduce the CO2 concentration and at the same time changes the temperature of the air forty percent of all the energy used in cities is caused by that changing the temperature of the air to get rid of something completely different the carbon dioxide Net Zero hello there's your answer the plans do it for nothing and you're burning coal and in 10 years you'll be blowing nuclear I hate to say and the plants just do it come on we've got a problem though the problem is we work with some interior designers and they put plants in spaces and it looks like that you you need more than that yeah this is great you need more than that too this is it there's your plants right that's your plants green walls are engineering Solutions you get the number of plants you need you've got improved substrate exposure the bit of the part of the system the potting mix that removes the pollutions you can get to it from both sides it's vertical doubles the pollution removal so when we've measure this stuff pollution removal rates are just through the roof they're much better but we've got a technologists sized for anyway an updated version plants version two you stick a little fan on the back a computer fan all right just get that airflow moving this is now a thing that you can buy this is we've done a lot of research on this and this is now an available system when you do this performance becomes really really good like I'm talking air conditioning HEPA air filter Dyson good Pace better than Dyson so increased rate of removal of everything carbon dioxide that air conditioning energy thing again all those vocs we're talking a computer fan it's not the amount of energy you're using to run air conditioning it's trivial amount of energy just in case you're going to ask now it doesn't dump mold spores if you set it up properly first thing you're going to say just making molds now we're not making mold spots we measured that temperature and humidity what else does air conditioning do plant with a computer fans like to the back of it that does it for free this is a chamber we put diesel we put Beijing bad day diesel smoke in a chamber a Top Line it settles out a little bit by itself it's in a chamber we put this plant box this green one with a fan in it look at the diesel smoker just it vanishes we did this and something that happens a lot in our line of research we do something and look at the results and go what really do it again so so I was talking about the air conditioning systems with the filters they're called this room's probably using mervi minimum efficiency reporting value it's how effectively they filter out the dust 13's high standard for clean rooms and so on that green wall is better filtering particulates it's better okay we went to Beijing when air quality in Beijing it was like a dream you get out of the plane and go yeah that's what I'm talking about it smells like you got the exhaust pipe we built this in a school room it was a really high level School room they had the actual best air conditioning system that you can get in the world we measured it here's another graph it's a complicated one these are particle sizes these are little itty bitty tiny particles they're really Dangerous Ones PM 0.3 that's that's that's not good for you it gets right down the bottom of your lungs other ends big particles not so bad blue lines these top of the range air conditioning system in a school room in Beijing green line is the green wall with the air conditioning system sealed off left it for dead and it's not using 40 of all the energy used in the built environment I'm talking about Net Zero again I am obsessed by it I've got a minute to go there's a car park transport for New South Wales got on board with this whole idea and they built a car park with this filtration system on the outside this car park is a pollution sink all the cars come in in the morning little cars leave in the afternoon the car park absorbs more pollution than it puts out and pumps out clean air these are clean air delivery rates that car park pumps out a hundred and one thousand cubic meters of Clean Air free of particles per day we can do the same with nitrogen dioxide and ozone other dangerous pollutants we this car park pumps out clean air this is what Net Zero looks like this is the future isn't it come on now give us your money so I can do the research anyway summer all right black line was black summer air The Gray Line was there that people it was coming out of the back of this filter massacred the pollution okay it's a green wall it's not an air conditioning system what else can plants do sound absorption properties we did a sound absorption test is that I'm telling you how the big cell the lines that matters the green line the green line is an acoustic tile its only job is to remove sound right back line is the green wall you can see at the right hand side of the graph high frequencies right the acoustic tile Works a bit better than the green wall at low frequencies on the left the green wall walks a little bit better than the acoustic tile guess what that's the noise that matters that's that's free it absorbs sound that's that's a free thing what else can we do from the urban Forest here this is began beyond the green Walls listen the argument I'm trying to make here is that plans are the answer they make us happy they make our cities work they make everything better how are you going to sequester carbon dioxide it's got to be through trees huh they can't plant them all in the bush they've got to be in the cities as well when people live near trees they are better people they're more healthy and a long list of other services property values a tree in your backyard is worth fifty thousand dollars for the value of your property just in case you didn't know that and you're pulling out the chainsaw like my neighbor did me sustainable cities have to be grown luckily the message is getting across we've got countries all around the world starting to put in trees purely for the purpose of moving forward this sustainability issue we've got a couple of problems we've got really still to do some more research plants can produce some air pollution under certain circumstances we've got to get a handle on that haven't measured all the pollutants as much as we'd like we need to start incorporating these things in modern buildings and seeing what they can do to reduce that energy haven't done that yet it's really expensive join us work with us and we can do that research um plants produce negative ions covid-19 is positively charged they will remove covid-19 but I'm not doing the research under any circumstances I am not having that in my lab don't say we're doing it we're not doing it and the Net Zero I think I've already talked about barriers space availability obviously we're going to try and get urban planners to get on board with the whole issue and the whole green washing thing I mean you can clearly see I'm a hippie uh right yeah that's not green washing anymore it's now engineering and finally perception of return on investment they cost money so we see building plans and they put green Walls and plants in them and then they go through the bean counters and guess what goes it's not the workstations you battery hands you it's the plants so hopefully this whole environmental social and governance things what fixes everything um there's my slide that I show this is that I don't do anything I just look these other people who make it happen we do the research we matter stuff we measure stuff people leading the way governments companies installing these things demonstrating giving us things to measure and try and make the argument that's a partial list the future either looks like that or it looks like Venus all right so so that's what that's that's my argument um I'm over time you didn't throw anything at me last conference I did they did yeah love you all thanks [Music]

Channel: Happiness & Its Causes

Views: 260

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Id: cgKqAEhXvQc

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022