Ozone is a strong oxidizer, and it has been used for many years to sanitize and deodorize surfaces in empty rooms, vehicles, and buildings. Our machines are built for exactly that job: ozone shock treatments of unoccupied spaces. Ozone is never for breathing, and we make no medical claims.
Short, high-concentration treatments work best
Some sellers suggest running ozone generators for 12 to 24 hours at a time. Many of those are ceramic plate machines that get hot and stop producing clean ozone after a few minutes. The better approach is a short, high-concentration shock treatment. That reaches the surfaces you want to sanitize without giving ozone hours to react with the many materials inside a home or building.
How to do a safe ozone shock treatment
- Remove all people, pets, and plants from the space.
- Close windows and doors, set the timer, and leave.
- Keep the space closed for the recommended time after the machine shuts off.
- Open windows and air the space out well before anyone goes back in.
For run times and how many machines you need, see our Ozone Shock Treatment Advice and Ozone Sizing Guide. Questions? Call us for a free consultation.
Just ordered the $99 machine for my car. We adopted a 6 year old Great Dane five months ago and my car needs an Ozone treatment, bad!
Reading your blog, I am thrilled to find out about the implications for use against COVID etc.!!! I’ll be using it in the house also.
The 1920 article you cited used the word “ventilation” in regards to the use of Ozone treatment in schools. That would seem to indicate the Ozone machines were used while students and teachers were present, which, as we know would be harmful. I’m going to try to find out more about this article and any other studies.
My experience with Ozone machines comes from our business. When we used Ozone machines in our business preparing residential rental units for new occupants (painting, housekeeping and carpet cleaning) it was for smoke and culinary damaged units (cigarettes and heavy use of Indian/Asian spices). Extremely damaged units required a complete TSP cleaning of all painted surfaces prior to a complete repaint which we would follow with a 24 hour ozone treatment. We had the old machines with the plates and were not aware of the shortcomings of those machines and longer use not being effective – no wonder it wasn’t always effective against the cuisine damage! After the treatment, we would run in, open all the windows, turn on all the fans etc., and run out. No one was allowed in the unit for another 24 hours. On occasion, an “occupied” unit would be Ozone’s however, no people, pets and no plants were allowed in the unit to be Ozone’d for the entire duration of the process. Additionally, anything leather, rubber or elastic had to be covered to protect from the drying aspects of the ozone treatment had on those fabrics.
Hi Jane. Thanks for the input. As for ozone drying things out, it’s more the oxidation threat that makes it dangerous to run for say 24 hours straight. When you rent a machine, you want to run it the entire time to get your monies worth, but it’s not safe on the foam in the furniture or the gaskets to the fridge, etc. However, the ‘flash point’ to damage those things comes after hours of exposure to high ozone concentrations. If you follow our protocol of 30 on 1 hour off, you’ll never get to that flash point and you don’t have to cover furniture. Also, the ozone shocks they did in the St Louis schools was at night in the HVAC (ventilation) systems. Not with kids present. It’s been known for 100 plus years that breathing high concentrations of ozone is harmful to the lungs. So they shocked the classrooms at night via their HVAC systems. Many schools do this on the down low with our equipment. Some in Louisiana that serve poor communities have mold issues that our ozone machines have addressed (in certain classrooms) with amazing results. (Less sick days, higher test scores) The teachers who use our machines are scared to publish their results because they didn’t get approval from the school board. They would have said no for sure. A sad commentary on the state of our Union but it is what is is and one has to take their health in their own hands these days instead of trusting the people who run the show. Their track record for honesty and having our best interest, health wise, in mind is very questionable, to say the least.