PHILIPS AIR TREE
by Jill Fehrenbacher, 11/24/05
Trees are great for many reasons. They help moderate climate, they provide shelter from sun, wind and rain, and they shelter wildlife. Most importantly, they act as air purifiers, removing nasty carbon dioxide, dust, ozone, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide from the air so that we can breathe nice clean oxygen.
We love trees so much that we wish we could keep one in our house for the air-purifying benefits (we’re working on it). However, until that day comes, Philip’s Air Tree is a good stand-in. Conceived as both a decorative item, and an air purifier / humidifier, the Air Tree takes is cue from nature and keeps the home environment fresh by performing much the same function as a biological tree: cleaning the air.
We can’t wait until these come to market. Hopefully by then they’ll be a little less bulky and a little more tree-like as well.
The AirTree is part of the Philips Sense & Simplicty design project, which we covered a couple weeks back with the LED Lightbulb and Philips Herbarium, which Philips launched in Paris in September.
Via Businessweek
Oddly eno,ugh some trees are actually gross poluters, releasing quantities of Volatile Organic Compounds – weird hydrochemicals and members of the family of chemicals associated with Sick Building Syndrom (isoprenes etc). Obviously I’m not against forests and trees (ha ha), but it is interesting to note nature’s quirks, and some of the potential unexpected side effects of (for example) single species biomass farming.
More on VOCs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound