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🎁🎁 中英文稿：
Air pollution outside is easy to spot, hanging over the city, or sputtering from a tailpipe. But there's lot of indoor air pollution, too, even if it's not as obvious. It's caused by volatile organic compounds, or VOCs.
人們很容易發現室外空氣污染，污濁的空氣懸浮在城市上方，以及汽車排放的尾氣。但是雖然並不明顯，但是室內也存在大量的空氣污染。室內空氣污染的源頭是揮發性有機化合物，簡稱為VOCs.
"They can come from building materials like paints, carpet, adhesives, vinyl floors, varnishes, solvents, etc." Vadoud Niri, an analytical chemist at the State University of New York, Oswego. "And also they can come from home and personal care products, cleaning chemicals, air freshener, cosmetics."
這些揮發的化合物來自建築材料，如油漆、地毯、粘合劑、地板革、清漆、溶劑等。Vadoud Niri是紐約州立大學的分析化學家。同時，家庭和個人保健品、清潔劑、空氣清新劑、化妝品。
And that cosmetics part… is what caught Niri's attention. "One day when I went to a nail salon with my wife, I noticed the smell of, specifically, acetone in there. And since I was doing air analysis at that time, I thought maybe we can do something about this." Acetone can irritate your eyes, skin, nose and throat and at high concentrations can cause nausea, headaches and other nervous system problems.
其中化妝品中的揮發物質吸引了Niri的注意力。“有一天，我和妻子一起去做指甲沙龍，我聞到了丙酮的味道。因為當時我正在研究空氣中的化合物，所以我想或許我們可以做相關方面的研究。”丙酮可以刺激人的眼睛、皮膚、鼻子還有咽喉。高濃度的丙酮可以引發噁心、頭痛以及其他神經問題。
Niri figured one way to get rid of acetone might be with houseplants. So he reviewed decades of literature in the field of plants as environmental cleanup agents—which is called biofiltration or phytoremediation. He then ran his own experiment, using an airtight chamber, eight VOCs, in concentrations similar to those found in nail salons, and five common houseplants: a jade plant, a spider plant, a bromeliad, a Caribbean tree cactus, and what’s known as a Dracaena plant.
Niri發現了一種方法可以去除室內的丙酮氣體，那就是室內植物。所以，他流覽了數十年來對於的文獻——植物可以淨化空氣，人們常稱為生物過濾或者植物修復。之後，Niri自己進行了實驗測試，他使用密閉的房間，室內存在八種揮發性氣體，其濃度與指甲沙龍內的氣體濃度相似，同時，還有五種常見的室內植物：玉植物、吊蘭、鳳梨、仙人掌和加勒比樹。
Turns out, after a twelve-hour test, it was the bromeliad that scrubbed the most chemicals from the air. But as for his original quest, removing acetone from nail salons? The Dracaena beat out the others, sucking up 94 percent of the offensive compound. He presented the results at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, in Philadelphia.
經過十二小時的測試，結果表明，鳳梨最能吸收空氣中的有毒氣體。但是，對於最初的疑問，去除指甲沙龍裡面的丙酮?在這個問題上，龍血樹是最厲害的，它吸收了94%的有害物質。在費城舉行的美國化學學會上，Niri呈現了自己的研究結果。
Niri hasn't worked out all the details on the nail salon solution yet—that's next. But for a house or apartment, he says, "use a variety of plants to make sure you take all types of VOCs from your indoor air." Plus, they're an energy-free alternative to other air cleaning devices. In other words, a truly green solution.
