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Annotated Bibliography

Maxwell B Brule

Red Rock Community College

English Composition 2

Jennine Tetamore

November 6, 2022
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Berger, J., Essah, E., Blanusa, T., & Beaman, C. P. (2022). The appearance of indoor plants and

their effect on people's perceptions of indoor air quality and subjective well-being.

Building and Environment, 219, 109151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109151

This source takes into account a few of my older sources but focuses more on the

productivity and psychological impacts that plants can have on indoor spaces separated

from the outside environment. This study takes into account many more factors such as

participants’ fondness towards each individual plant paralleled with how they made the

participants feel. Each author has backgrounds in fields relevant to this paper such as

agriculture, psychology and clinical language, and horticulture respectively.

ScienceDirect is a peer reviewed article site from which another one of my sources was

found. They focus on various scientifically studied and reviewed topics. Oftentimes each

article found on the site has first gone through a lengthy review and revision process

before it can be posted to ScienceDirect. I will use this source to further strengthen my

evidence for claims regarding the impact plants have in work environments on

productivity and stress, which is mostly what this source itself focuses on. In this journal,

Berger et al explain that indoor air quality and the general indoor environment contribute

vast numbers to workplace leave and feelings of stress, thus the introduction of plants

greatly relieves each of these problems and more. The article also goes on to say that

many of these issues such as air quality and low humidity can be resolved with

mechanical systems, however they are much more costly and require energy to work.
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Dzhambov, A. M., Lercher, P., Browning, M. H. E. M., Stoyanov, D., Petrova, N., Novakov, S.,

& Dimitrova, D. D. (2021). Does greenery experienced indoors and outdoors provide an

escape and support mental health during the COVID-19 quarantine? Environmental

Research, 196, 110420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.110420

This study took place in Bulgaria between May 17 and June 10 of 2020 and used an

online survey to study 323 different students and their mental state paralleled with study

what access they had to viewing greenery, either in their living space or seeing plants and

nature outside from their place of living. Overall the study concluded that having a

garden or indoor plants resulted in much better mental health and lesser feelings of

depression and stress. On the other hand, more outside or neighborhood greenery,

“contributed to neighborhood restorative quality, which in turn facilitated social support

and more frequent engagement with greenery, and that led to better mental health”

(Dzhambov et al. 2021). This evidence will not only strengthen my claims regarding the

benefits of houseplants on physiological and psychological health, but also provide a real

world example of houseplants and nature doing exactly that. This source is one of three

that have come from the ScienceDirect site of peer reviewed journals. The site is

excellent for finding credible and relevant sources within the scientific community for

various topics.

Lee, M. S., Lee, J., Park, B. J., & Miyazaki, Y. (2015). Interaction with indoor plants may reduce

psychological and physiological stress by suppressing autonomic nervous system activity

in young adults: a randomized crossover study. Journal of physiological anthropology,

34(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40101-015-0060-8

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In this study, Min-Sun Lee, Juyoung Lee, Bum-Jin Park, and Yoshifumi Miyazaki

researched the effects tasks involving plants had on young males psychological and

physiological state. They gathered 24 young male adults and split them up so that twelve

of them would start by transplanting houseplants and the other twelve would complete

computer tasks. Before and throughout the study they noted the volunteers psychological

state using the Semantic Differential Method, physiological state by monitoring their

heart rate variability and blood pressure. Through each method that was recorded they

saw significantly more positive results from the houseplant activity. Each subject noted

feeling comforted, soothed, and natural (results from SDM) after the plant activity,

additionally, their heart rate variability and diastolic blood pressure were both lower after

completing the plant task. In conclusion, the researchers gathered that dealing with indoor

plants can reduce physiological and psychological stress.

This paper was posted to the National Library of Medicine with the purpose of detailing

the means of which houseplants helped reduce stress in the participants. This article was

written to highlight the stress relief factor, this can be seen in the paper through the

authors’ use of the gathered data and analysis of said data. For my purposes, this source

will be used as one of the main benefits individuals can receive from indoor plants when

discussing how houseplants are a great addition to your life and daily schedule.

All of the authors are credited in numerous papers and studies in the field of medicine,

for example, the first listed author Min-Sun Lee is credited in 544 articles through the

National Library of Medicine. Each article had to be reviewed before being published on

the site. The authors of this study are extremely credible and clearly have dedicated

themselves to their field of study as well established researchers.

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Sriprapat, W., & Strand, S. E. (2016). A lack of consensus in the literature findings on the

removal of airborne benzene by houseplants: Effect of bacterial enrichment. Atmospheric

Environment, 131, 9–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2016.01.031

W. Sriprapat and S. E. Strand wrote this article in 2015 discussing the ability plants have

at removing indoor air pollutants. They themselves did test certain plants on their ability

to do so and overall came to an answer that wouldn’t be so black and white. Their studies

concluded ultimately that their experiment with benzene levels and house plants

commonly used amongst studies of this topic warranted the growth of benzene degrading

bacteria. However they did end their entry with guidelines or parameters that should be

obeyed by any following studies of houseplant ability to remove air pollutants to ensure

any findings are without error and promote consistency in the field. This source is

without a doubt useful for my objective while still providing a point that acknowledges

counter claims that could be made against my position. This additionally may reduce the

amount of insufficient sources that would support my position when paralleled with the

concluding findings of this journal by looking at the closing aforementioned parameters

that should be followed to ensure consistency and proper experimentation. This source

was accessed on SciencDirect and through Elsevier journals which offers peer reviewed

research papers on topics such as climate change, biodiversity, renewable energy and

other topics.

Wolverton, B. C. (2013, August 16). Foliage plants for improving indoor air quality - NASA

technical reports server (NTRS). NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server. Retrieved

September 28, 2022, from https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930073015

This source is a bit of an oddity. It was originally published on January 1, 1988 but it was
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then electronically accessed on August 16, 2013. However, the source is extremely

credible and much more current sources actually cite this one as well. The author, Bill

Wolverton, is an American scientist who specializes in chemistry, microbiology,

biochemistry, marine biology and environmental engineering. This source is one of his

most renowned works. In the research Wolverton analyzes various plants on their ability

to remove pollutants from the air with hopes of applying his findings to manned space

travel with the air in the shuttle. This source is often seen as the backbone of studies

regarding analysis of plants and their air purification abilities and henceforth has inspired

countless other studies all the way to much more recent ones. Wolverton found that lower

levels of air pollutants can be removed from the plant leaves alone and furthermore even

higher levels can be removed by filtering indoor air through the plant roots surrounded by

activated carbon.

Yang, D. S., Pennisi, S. V., Son, K., & Kays, S. J. (2009). Screening Indoor Plants for Volatile

Organic Pollutant Removal Efficiency, HortScience horts, 44(5), 1377-1381. Retrieved

Sep 1, 2022, from

https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/5/article-p1377.xml

In this study by Dong Sik Yang, Svoboda V. Pennisi, Ki-Cheol Son, and Stanley J. Kays,

these authors took 28 different house plants and studied their ability to remove aromatic

hydrocarbons, aliphatic hydrocarbon, halogenated hydrocarbon, and terpene (i.e.

benzene, toluene, octane, trichloroethylene and a-pinene) from the air. Each plant was

separately placed in glass containers and exposed to these pollutants. Finally each plant

was measured on their removal efficiencies. From the results and methods used to
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measure this, the researchers found that there were a few plant species that were much

more effective at removing the pollutants than others. All in all they concluded to

effectively improve air quality, more than one plant would be needed but it was

successful. This 2009 research article was published to emphasize the positive effects

houseplants can have on the environment and the air we breathe. In the end of the article

the team concluded that indoor plants do reduce stress and improve our physiological and

psychological state, and as far as air quality, there was indeed an improvement however

more testing would be necessary to quantify exactly how much of an improvement would

be yielded from what number of plants to make a drastic impact on air quality. Most

likely I will use this source to touch on the data that was found in regards to air quality,

comparatively, the impact to the human mental and physical state is also talked about in

this source however it is not the main topic of the study. With this in mind I could also

use the findings from this source as backup evidence to go along with my first annotated

source. Each author credited to this article also worked on other similar articles dealing

with. Horticulture. This piece itself was posted to the American Society for Horticultural

Science after being reviewed and edited in 2009. The only area of concern here could be

the date of which this was published, while the findings are beneficial to my argument, I

could definitely take a further dive into the authors or even just the topic to find more

information.