COULD IONIC AIR PURIFIERS DAMAGE YOUR LUNGS?
The bottom line is: stay away from any ionic air purifier.
Here's why ionic air purfiers don't work and may harm your health:
Two types exist...some deliberately generate ozone (see my article on ozone air purifiers in particular) to clean the air, some have ionizers that charge air particles and attract them to metal plates. The latter also produces ozone, but as a by-product.
What's wrong with ozone?
When you force three oxygen molecules forced together, you get ozone (O3).
Sounds harmless, but Ozone achieves harmful effects on humans and animals and is an air pollutant. Ozone is medically proven to damage the lungs, heart, promote plaque in the arteries, and irritate conditions such as asthma.
Ozone is naturally produced by lightning, and one medical journal demonstrated a higher visitation rate of asthma sufferers to emergency rooms after thunderstorms.
Fresh air and Living Air purifiers actually claim and strive to duplicate the thunderstorm effect. ("Imitates nature's way of purifying the air!")
Ozone demonstrates some good uses in nature and to clean areas where people won't be around.
Summary: Ozone in Nature=good. Ozone by machine in your home=not good.
Ionic Air purifiers like the Living Air purifier that deliberatly generate ozone should obviously fall into the out of the question category because they purposefully introduce ozone into your home.
Ionic air purifiers that use metal collection plates ("filterless air purifiers") such as the ionic pro play a few more tricks since they don't generate as much ozone, or claim to have ozone removers built in.
Metal collection plates do not effectively filter air. A ridiculous amount of air particles pass through the collection plates unfiltered, right back into the air for you to breathe.
Secondly, the metal collection plates are can become hard to clean, and anecdotal reports say cigarette tar is very hard to clean. These plates need to be cleaned weekly or even more often.
Can you envision yourself cleaning your air purifier plates twice a week? Knowing that it's not really cleaning the air in the first place?
The short Ionic Soap Opera, if you care to know...
The Sharper Image, which declared bankruptcy in February 2008, kick started the ionic air purifier craze with the Ionic Breeze air purifier. After selling millions of these air purifiers, we all found out they produced ozone, which is harmful to your health and lungs.
Alpine Air and it's air purifiers were taken to court by the FTC for making unsubstantiated claims about their ionic air purifiers. Alpine lost. Alpine now essentially exists as Ecoquest.
Ecoquest air purifiers persist through multi-level marketing and are popular among certain stripes of supposed evangelical Christians.
They currently sell their Fresh air purifiers and Living air purifiers, which are ozone-based.
If you see any positive Ecoquest air purifier reviews online, it's probably from the over eager distributers themselves. Take your $600-700 and get a real air purifier.
The Ionic Pro air purifier brand is still around cleaning out any customers who didn't have the chance to be taken by the Sharper Image's Iionc Breeze air purifier or the Quadra air purifier. Their ionic air purifiers are essentially the same and they pretty much admit so on their website.
They make tons of unproven claims, and in my estimation are essentially worthless.
Summary
- Ozone is an air pollutant and can harm your health.
- Stay away from ozone generators such as the Fresh Air air purifier, Living Air air purifier, (made by Ecoquest) Flair Air, and older Alpine Air units.
- Ionic air purifiers such as the Ionic Pro are ineffective and, contrary to claims, inconvenient to clean.
For less than the cost of the living air air purifer ($750!), you can get my top-rated pick, the Blueair 501 or 601
For a little more you can get ultimate hospital room quality air purification from the IQ Air Healthpro plus.
Instead of of the $150 or more you'd burn on a basic Ionic Pro, go just a little further and get a real air purifier such as the Austin Air Healthmate and you'll save money with their ultra long filter life.
Or, move away from the ionic air purifer madness and check out our best air purifier list.
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