Excerpts from WebMD Article dated 5/11/06   Written by Daniel DeNoon
and reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Ozone Purifiers are NOT Ozone Generators!

Included in the study were several ionic air purifiers made by The
Sharper Image, including the popular Ionic Breeze Quadra. These
machines produce detectable levels of ozone. But they did not emit
dangerous levels of ozone, except when a Quadra model intended for a
large room was tested in a tiny bathroom.

Whatever ozone comes from ionic air purifiers pales in comparison to
the amount produced by ozone-generating air purifiers. These machines
make ozone for one reason: That's what they are designed to do.

By contrast, the Sharper Image Ionic Breeze Quadra model -- an ionic
air purifier, not an ozone generator -- built ozone to a maximum level
of 40 parts per billion (ppb) in a large office. The FDA considers
medical devices safe if they emit less than 50 ppb of ozone. The World
Health Organization considers eight-hour ozone levels of 60 ppb to be
acceptable.

Mark Connelly, senior director of appliances and home improvement for
Consumer Reports, oversees the magazine's air-cleaner tests. "You don't
want to say that anything that generates ozone is bad," Connelly tells
WebMD. "A printer produces ozone, but just because printers sit on
people's desks doesn't mean they should be taken off the market...."

Whatever ozone comes from ionic air purifiers pales in comparison to
the amount produced by ozone-generating air purifiers. These machines
make ozone for one reason: That's what they are designed to do.

"Sharper Image products were included in the study and, in fact, met
all safety standards for ultra-low trace ozone emissions when the
appropriate-sized models were used in the manufacturer-recommended room
sizes," Stephens tells WebMD. "Why they chose to place the unit in a
room size for which it is clearly not intended nor used is
inexplicable."

Nizkorodov says he thinks California will set a limit on how much ozone
a device will be allowed to generate. He guesses the limit will be
between 10 and 100 milligrams of ozone per hour -- and his bet is on
the lower limit. His study found that the Sharper Image Ionic Breeze
Quadra puts out 2.2 milligrams of ozone per hour -- far below the
lowest limit California is likely to set.

Complete WebMD Article:
http://www.webmd.com/content/article/122/114532.htm