Indoor Air Quality – Ozone Toxicity

Pros and cons of ozone air purifiers

Ozone and Air Quality

We get asked questions about ozone all the time and why we do not carry ozone generators, and some very popular air cleaners, which emit ozone. Ozone is toxic colorless gas, which is an irritant especially to people with respiratory problems. The fact that it occurs naturally in nature is the justification given that something natural cannot be harmful to you, which is faulty logic if ever I heard one. When you think about it there are many deadly poisons, which occur in nature, but noone would maintain they are good for you. However, Ozone is not all bad, so I will try and distinguish fact from fiction for you.

Ozone plays an important part in screening you from skin cancer and the suns harmful rays. In the earths stratosphere about 10-30 miles up it occurs naturally in thunderstorms. Ozone at that level above earth therefore has a productive role to play.

However down at near ground level, ozone is considered an environmental pollutant, which is why you hear pollutant advisory warnings for people with respiratory problems such as asthma when the ozone level is too high. It is now well documented, that people who live in areas where there is a chronic high ozone levels suffer from decreased lung capacity and functioning over time.

Ozone is also an indoor pollutant, which is the source of the controversy for vendors of machines of various kinds that emit ozone. The EPA has in its wisdom mandated “safe” ozone levels, the thinking being along the lines that a little bit of poison will not hurt you too much and most peoples immune systems can cope with filtering out toxins quite effectively. I have always thought that this logic is inherently flawed. The American Lung Association thankfully is less ambiguous on their position and states there are no safe levels of ozone for people with compromised immune systems. For these people Ozone is an irritant to the throat, eyes and nose as well as the lungs.

For those of you who have not been around ozone, it has a distinctive odor. Some like it, most do not. Some people in our office cannot abide more than a few minutes of exposure to ozone and get wicked headaches from it. A customer of ours complained her dentist had a very well known ionic air cleaner in his office and it made her as sick as a dog and she could not complete her dental work if he insisted on running this air cleaner.

Helpful Uses of Ozone

As I indicated earlier there are some problematic tasks that ozone can accomplish effectively, these include:

Restoration after fire damage.
I have used an ozone machine after fire damage to my house on the advice from a hepa air cleaner manufacturer. Although Ozone can produce some toxic byproducts the advice I was given is that carbon is too expensive for fire restoration as one would need too much of it. Best to use the ozone first then use a hepa filter with carbon to clean up the residue including any toxic byproducts such as aldehydes or formaldehydes from the ozone.

Removing of smoke odor after a smoker has been in the room.
As a landlord, I have found that a high-capacity ozone machine left on full blast for a few days (you should vacate the premises then air the place out on your return) does wonders for odor removal. Hotels regularly use ozone for the same purpose but the room is closed to occupants. The odor does not completely go away however and I have found that vapor steam cleaning makes the whole environment sweet smelling again.

Disinfect and purify water both in residential and municipal water systems
Ozone used in consumer water purifiers is actually very effective and is also routinely used in municipal water. You may have read that some fancy bottled water contains no more than tap water which has been ozonated.

A food preservative
Interestingly enough, food exposed to ozone lasts longer. Some people put small ozone machines in refrigerators for that very purpose.

A disinfectant
A fascinating but little known fact is that freshly ozonated water is a disinfectant and would be a wonderful natural alternative to bleach when cleaning up after mold or any other surface such as kitchens or bathrooms which harbor bacteria. The problem is it degrades to regular water after about 20 minutes and most of the ozonated water machines are too small to generate enough ozone purified water for this task.

Indoor Sources of Ozone

A disturbing but true fact is that a number of household and office appliances emit ozone, albeit to purportedly “safe levels.” The level that different regulatory agencies find is safe differ from each other. OSHA recommends .01ppm never be exceeded but the EPA has dictated that levels up to .08ppm are not hazardous to human health.

Sources of ozone in the workplace include photocopiers, laser printers, X-ray generators and ultraviolet sources as well as electrostatic or ionic air cleaners. You can test for the level of ozone pollution at your home or office very inexpensively with ozone test strips.

The health hazards of indoor ozone pollution.

You would think that with all the widely known and documented health hazards of ozone that manufacturers of air cleaners who hide their ozone producing propensities would be banned and their products never see the light of day. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Symptoms of Ozone Exposure

Ozone is a gas, so most likely you get exposed to it by inhaling it in its gaseous form. If you inhale too much of it you get sick but the level to which you can tolerate it differs widely among individuals including gender, pulmonary health, prior respiratory or allergy problems. Severe reactions to even brief exposure to ozone unfortunately include death, lung cancer and impaired lung functioning as individuals lose their ability to exhale particles which have now become “stickier”. Milder or more transient symptoms include coughing or wheezing, headaches or dizziness, vomiting or nausea, inability to concentrate, shortness or tightness of breath. The list goes on.

Protect yourself from Ozone exposure.

We are not able to live in an “ozone free” world but at least we can take some reasonable precautions, in the same way as we now stay away from second handhand smoke.

Stay indoors when your local weather bureau has issued an ozone alert.
Avoid air cleaners which emit ozone.
Do not go immediately into a hotel room after it has been ozonated.
Put printers and laser copiers at a distance from your personal work space.
Use a good hepa air filter in your work place.

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