Allergy Consumer Review Issue #7

Added by: Editor

Dear Everyone,

The Ozone Cleaner Controversy

I get at least one email a week from site visitors asking why we do not offer ozone cleaners on our shopping site. I confess to having used an Alpine for over two years in a basement office in a former house. I got rid of the Alpine as I got more educated. I also did not feel better. What ozone machines are good for in my experience is the following: I rented an apartment once to a smoker for two years. After he left I rented a commercial grade ozone machine and left it on full blast for 3 days. I came back and opened the windows. There was not a trace of odor left- anywhere. Now, the bad news. Ozone is a known lung irritant and Alpine has been continuously in court with the federal and state governments for making false and misleading claims representing it as an air cleaner. They can make claims about odor control.

When I was investigating this thoroughly a couple of years ago, I asked our local Alpine rep to give me one piece of scientific evidence to substantiate claims for particulate removal. He gave me a stack of papers but not one on the subject requested. I then talked to the head of medical products testing for the Canadian government. He told me of a couple of interesting tests they did on Alpine machines. Firstly, he said they tested separately the ionizer, fan and ozone elements of the machine in a smoke filled room. The fan turned out to be by far the most powerful element of the machine. His comment to me was he thought that $600 was a high price to pay for a $30 fan.

In addition, in order to test the Alpine Claim that their ionizer could move ions through walls and ionize a whole house, they filled a sealed plastic chamber with smoke particles and set the Alpine down on the lab bench about a foot away from the chamber. There was no reduction in smoke particles. He further told me, he suspected much of the ozone odor removal effect was one of masking. They conducted an “orange sniff” test. They rubbed an orange onto the back of one hand of a bunch of people and asked volunteers to sniff out the “orange hand”. Volunteers that had been exposed to ozone before coming into the room could not smell the difference. Volunteers who had no ozone exposure were immediately able to tell the difference. That was all I personally needed to hear. I felt a little dumb for having used one of these machines at all, but I did feel I had gotten to the bottom of this can of worms. Yet Alpine continue to survive under different company names. It seems like a moving target. I believe they sell more of these machines than any other in the market place.

In This Issue

Mercia Tapping
President / CEO AllergyBuyersClub.com
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