On Sunday, January 6, 2013 3:49:05 PM UTC-8, Billy wrote:
In article ,

Stuart Strand wrote:



On Wednesday, January 2, 2013 6:34:43 PM UTC-8, David Hare-Scott wrote:

Stuart Strand wrote:



Dear David (and Billy),







Sorry to be delayed in replying. I wanted to give you a summary of



the latest research, so I had to bring myself up to speed with recent



meta-analyses of the growing home air pollution literature. Also the



holidays got in the way.







Anyway I have posted a short summary (pdf) with citations on the



SuperPothos website (in the Gallery tab), titled "Levels and risks of



indoor air pollutants"







thanks











http://d2oadd98wnjs7n.cloudfront.net...30102121643-Le

vels_of_indoor_air_pollutants.pdf?1357157806











This URL gives me a 403 error, security.







D



OK, sorry about the confusion. Two options:



1. Try this URL:

http://d2oadd98wnjs7n.cloudfront.net...2123743-Levels

_of_indoor_air_pollutants.pdf?1357159066



2. Go to the indiegogo website, click on the gallery tab and download the pdf

labeled "Levels_of_indoor_air_pollutants"



http://www.indiegogo.com/SuperPothos/x/1889244?c=home



It's a little confusing in that you seem to be suggesting at least two

products. One to remove benzene and chloroform. and another to remove

chloroform, benzene, carbon tetrachloride and styrene. What, no aldehyde

removal for our FEMA trailer homes? What are suggested levels for these

toxins, and what are their household levels typically? Yeah, I could

look it up, but you are the one doing the selling. Sell me.



A little quantification would also be nice. Compared to other house

plants, like a natural pothos, with equal surface areas, at STP, how

much time is required to remove a given amount of benzene, or

chloroform from the test area?





Do you realize that a cytochrome P450 2E1 enhanced tobacco plant would

be of little interest to gardeners (as a house plant?) because of the

mosaic tobacco virus? Removing chloroform, benzene, carbon tetrachloride

and styrene from the home environment is a desirable action, but

removing the sources of this contamination may be more practical.





Lastly, please don't try to dissuade Frank from smoking around open

containers of ether.



--

Welcome to the New America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg

or

E Pluribus Unum

Next time vote Green Party

Happy to clear up issues: We are presently proposing only one gene in houseplants: the mammalian cytochrome P450 2E1, which attacks and degrades benzene, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, dichlorobenzene, and several other volatile organic compounds that frequently exceed health standards in home air. Formaldehyde is a desirable target of course, but 2E1 does not degrade formaldehyde. We are looking at other formaldehyde degrading genes for future work, but so are other groups in China and Japan, especially.

Of course we don't propose to use transgenic tobacco as a houseplant, that would be impractical for a variety of reasons. But since tobacco is easily transformed we transformed it as a proof -of-concept. Tobacco transformed with 2E1 degraded benzene and the other pollutants more than 20x faster than untransformed tobacco in small scale experiments. We expect that transformed pothos ivy will have the same increased pollutant destroying capability.. We think we are already close to having a 2E1 transformed pothos and will have confirming data this week.

As for the pollutant levels that are present in homes, the little review I wrote gives a good summary of the current literature.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/b3zjt2y

I don't think it is too difficult to read, but to summarize, most US homes have levels of benzene (2ug/m3) that are close to or exceed maximum health standards for chronic exposures (0.3 ug/m3). the same applies to dichlorobenzene (2 and 0.9 ug/m3 respectively) and carbon tetrachloride (0.6 and 0.24 respectively). Chloroform levels in showering typically exceed the one hour acute exposure standards (150 ug/m3).

As far as getting rid of sources, that is certainly the best mitigation action, but it is not easy. Benzene is emitted from fuel storage in attached garages, so you would need to find another place to park your car and store your lawn mover, no smoking, no indoor fires, including perhaps cooking. Chloroform is present in all chlorinated water, so, unless you use your own well, you will need a whole house activated carbon filtration, with frequent and costly switching out of the filter. Carbon tet comes from outside (as does a lot of benzene), so that is a problem. We think our superpothos would make a good alternative and could result in a decrease in the levels of these carcinogens, which even if the reduction is only partial would decrease cancers in the US.