Roanoke College has decided that indoor plants are a bad thing. No, really. The college hired an air quality expert, mercifully unnamed, who recommended banning potted plants in one large building to “decrease the possibility of mold and mildew.” The building contains classrooms, laboratories, offices and dorm rooms.

No mention was made of teaching students not to make piles of dirty socks, underwear and wet towels, or to throw out yesterday’s leftover pizza before it becomes last month’s petri dish, or to clean and dust their rooms periodically (more than once a year), or to clean up spills immediately, or to make sure plumbing leaks are reported and fixed promptly, or to close the windows when it’s raining, or to refrain from food fights… the list could go on for awhile.

This is classic baby-with-the-bathwater thinking. Yes, an overwatered plant can create a mold problem, albeit a small one that’s easily corrected. Odds are, however, that a potted plant in a dorm room will be underwatered to the point it becomes a fire hazard, because we know how diligent college students are about taking care of their things.

Meanwhile, the classrooms, labs and offices will also have to do without greenery, which is a shame, because plants can soak up volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are airborne chemicals you don’t want to breathe. The authorities on this are NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America, who did an actual lab study back in the 1980s with tropical plants and some common VOCs.

“The tests were conducted in sealed test chambers that contained pollutants such as formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene, commonly present in indoor air from paints, varnishes, insulation, particleboard, pressed wood, adhesives and other sources,” says the article in The Daily Green.

Chances are a building full of classrooms, laboratories, offices and dorm rooms will contain these ugly chemicals and more.

Parents are naturally concerned about a lot of things when they send their children off to college for the first time. These concerns are magnified if the children are asthmatic. Settling into a new environment with a lot of other people opens up a whole spectrum of unanticipated irritations for someone who’s already sensitive. Mold, dust, VOCs and pollen are common irritants for asthmatics.

This article at USA Today offers some useful tips for helping asthmatic students protect themselves from respiratory assaults at college, although I have strong reservations about the flu vaccine part. A regular habit of vitamin D supplements and intelligent sun exposure would be more effective and less hazardous, but that’s just my opinion (I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen one played on TV).

I have some additional tips for parents of college students.