A customer called the other day and told me they had two friends recommend ozone generators to her. She lives in Texas and has mold issues. One recommended our 10-gram unit. Another had bought the Ivation ozone generator on Amazon and liked/recommended that unit. I had never heard of Ivation machines, so I checked them out on Amazon while talking to her and gave her the “skinny” on those machines just as I’ll give you now via this post.
Twenty-five years ago, when I was an Airpura rep, has a showroom in Las Vegas, NV and performed indoor air quality tests (as well as sold kits and machines online) I knew about the Alpine and EcoQuest mica plate ozone air purifiers. They were sold via MLM channels and were way overpriced (Some over $1000). The reasons I didn’t recommend them to my clients? For one, they don’t cause a significant or even noticeable reduction in air particulates. (The HEPA feature) No tabletop air purifier does! They don’t move enough air (CFM too low). I had sensitive air testing equipment and could test for high particulates 3 feet from the machine. The only clean air was found 2 inches from the air outlet. (Same issue in all tabletop air cleaners) The Airpura machines I sold sucked air in from 360 degrees and moved a lot of air. On high, they’re noisy, but they work! But the best way to remove dead skin and dust from your indoor air is to run your HVAC system fan in the “ON” position 24/y and employ a MERV 11 furnace filter. They’re sold on eBay for about $6 a piece (12-pack around $72). So forget HEPA. Go with MERV 11, and you air handler that recycles all the air in your home twice an hour!
Now on to the ozone feature. Ozone, at small concentrations such as those these machines produce (around 400 mg/h tops), will freshen the air but not kill mold or provide beneficial “ozone shock treatments” in unoccupied spaces. These machines are ozone air purifiers, not ozone generators. The 3″ x 3″ stainless steel portion of their ozone plates creates nanoparticle-free ozone (unlike the ceramic plate units sold on Amazon; a health hazard), which is a good thing. And they will give the air a nice, fresh smell of ozone. But since the ozone accumulates near the ground level. The concentration will harm your pets’ lungs. They have smaller lungs that can’t handle the elevated ozone concentrations near the floor. At 5-6 feet? With ceiling fans and the HVAC fan on? If you only turn it on now and then? You’ll probably be just fine. But if you run it 24/7? Yikes. You’ll probably be damaging your lungs and hurting your pets’ lungs for sure. Both Alpine and EcoQuest went belly up years ago as the litigation from hospital visits stacked up over time. It’s risky to sell ozone-producing air purifiers. I wish them luck!
Our 10g quartz tubes have two six-inch-long by 8-inch-long stainless steel mesh pieces on the inside and the outside of the 2″ wide, 8″ long quartz tube that produces 10g of pure, nanoparticle-free ozone per hour using our protocol that feeds them a constant supply of fresh air. They create 10-20ppm ozone concentrations that kill molds, viruses, bacteria, and pathogens. Those concentrations even kill small insects (used by green pesticide companies). They are ONLY used in UNOCCUPIED AREAS (no lungs present). That’s why they’re so effective at keeping critters from setting up shop in your attic or basement crawl spaces. Bats, rats, mice, etc can’t handle the ozone and have to leave the area promptly, or their lungs will start to bleed, and they’ll die. Death by ozone is a thing if your lungs get filled with the gas and you can’t leave the area. It’s that serious. And older folks who find these types of ozone-producing air purifiers on the shelf of an Airbnb and place them in their small bedroom at night often find themselves going to the hospital in the middle of the night with a coughing fit. In a bedroom. The ozone concentrations, even with 400 milligrams per hour, can elevate the ozone concentration to 3-5 ppm in an hour. And breathing those concentrations for a few hours can and will harm your lungs. That’s why they claim their machines treat up to 3500 square feet. The small amount of ozone they create in a space that large, with the HVAC system on, should not create ozone levels that harm your lungs, agreed. (The optimal word here is “should not”, lol) But in a living room or bedroom? Good luck!
So there you have it. Apples and oranges. This company, Ivation, sells ozone air purifiers, not shock treatment ozone generators. Remember the Sharper Image Quadra? It only produced 50-100 mgh of ozone, and that product was sued out of existence. My guess is that this company is based out of China and not subject to US laws, so they’ll probably be fine. But if they’re a US company? Yikes. Ozone-producing air purifiers are “persona non grata” in the US. For good reason.
PS. I like the smell of ozone myself and have our 10g machine cut on for 30 seconds every 5 to 10 minutes during waking hours near the air return, which runs 24/7. That amount of ozone in a house my size (around 2100 sq ft) only creates, according to my ozone meter, around .040 ppm of ozone in the air. Within the health guidelines. The benefit of doing this? It drives flies and mosquitoes away. Also gnats. Kills them if they stick around. And it prevents molds from taking hold. So there’s that to be said about having a small amount of ozone in the air. (beneficial) But this is best done via an HVAC air handler that disperses the ozone to the entire residence, not a tabletop machine that creates a cloud of ozone near the unit. We sell both the meter and the “repeat cycle timer” that allows you to have the unit cut on for x amound ot seconds every x amount of minutes. That’s the right way to introduce small amounts of ozone into your air, safely. Monitoring the ozone concentration levels? Essential. In my humble opinion.
