Walls of green make sick building's thing of the past.

If you had the same technology in your office that was designed to keep people alive on the lunar base, would you feel more confident about your health when you breathed in the air? What if that technology was beautiful to boot?

Manhattan Plant Experts, a small Manhattan-based woman owned company, creates "living plant walls" laden with flowering bromeliads, snake plants and sweet scent ed jasmine, that filter toxins from the air through models engineered by professors at the University of Guelph in Canada as an offshoot of a ten year research project on human space habitation. Unlike some other new plant walls where toxin cleaning plant roots are buried in dirt, Manhattan Plant Experts Living walls, or the "Natureaire Indoor Air Biofilter," utilize hydroponic growing methods. Flowers and plants are inserted in mossy pockets, drawing toxins directly to the plant roots, and down through a biofilter system consisting of a fan and water pump system that recycles the air and sends clean air back into the room.

This method is ideal for a city like New York where knowledge of terms like "sick building syndrome," have only recently alerted workers about potential health hazards steeped in the air which revolves around office culture.

"The indoor air is a complex soup of over 200-300 chemicals which of course includes your off gasses from carpets and rugs, cleaning products and photocopiers. Even people give off gasses because of the products we use and absorb," said Alan Darlington, president and ceo of Air Quality Solutions, and chief designer of the living plant wall.

"This bad air, this rubbish essentially, is drawn through the plant wall and biologically broken down. With this method we can create fresh indoor air just like nature does."

Better air quality and an abundance of plants in offices have also been noted to improve workers psychological well being by lowering stress levels, and been linked to increases in productivity and reduced absenteeism, according Eve DeGrezia co owner of Manhattan Plant Experts with partners Linda Drasheff, and Pamela Renna

"People just feel better when they are around lots of plants and they are not breathing in poisons. It's a no brainier," DeGrezia said.

Visiting the Lather Spa on East 57th street where Manhattan Plant Experts first official plant wall spans the entire length of a back room, visitors cannot help but feel the cleaner air. In the spa, women sit sipping tea with their heads wrapped in towels and their feet elevated on ottomans awaiting pedicures and seaweed body wraps and hydro massages can stare at the mossy wall containing pockets of philodendron, silver queens, bromeliad and snake plants. Drasheff, who stands nearby cleaning leaves and pulling stray dead ends off an anthurium, said even a business that is not obviously geared towards such lavish services as the spa can reap the benefits of cleaner air.

The time is ripe for these walls to come to fruition. Drasheff who began working in the horticultural business in the mid 70's has been pleasantly surprised to recognize the green building movement has spread so rampantly and businesses across the board are recognizing the importance of cleaner air.

Accordingly the fact that builders are constructing buildings to be more airtight to be more efficient, making them better environments for plant walls to work. It also makes them more effective than traditional ventilation systems where 20-30 percent of the air is drawn from outside. As Air Quality Solutions 1500 s/f active wall at the University of Guelph for example, can generate up to 30,000 cubic feet per minute of clean air.

Though both companies admit that bugs could conceivably create as much of a problem as bugs do in houseplants, the team at Manhattan Plant experts who check plants on a weekly basis, and the fact that the living wall has no moving or mechanical parts, make the maintenance of the wall a considerably less costly than maintenance of a traditional ventilation system.

Add to that the energy savings the project can bring, and the value of a plant wall cant be debated, Darlington said.

"If you looked at this project during the heat of the summer or the depths of cold of even a Canadian winter, you would find it a minimum of 70 percent more effective than traditional HVAC ventilation systems," Darlington said.