It’s interesting that so many of the air purifiers from the ’80s and ’90s used the “after a thunderstorm freshness” to describe what their air purifiers were supposed to do. And now that advertising has become popular again.
The air purifiers that use the thunderstorm jargon were responsible for the measures to prevent devices that produced ozone from being sold as home air cleaners.
The after a thunderstorm effect that the advertising alludes to is the fact that lightning creates ozone and it oxidizes all the contaminants in the air, leaving the air clean and fresh.
All very true.
But the problem with using ozone as an air purifier is that it does not only oxidize the contaminants in the air, it can also oxidize your lung tissue when you breathe it.
That’s why they say that ozone can be a lung irritant.
And ozone has a nasty habit of building up inside of a closed room. What makes it unsafe to use as a domestic air purifier.
There are not too many companies selling ozone machines as air purifiers anymore.
No one wants to be associated with something that actually could cause harm. Especially if you’re claiming the opposite.
And there is the problem with not being able to sell to California at all because of their specific ozone laws.
But just when you thought it was safe to come out of the water,
The air purifier in question is the EdenPURE® OxiLeaf® II Thunderstorm™ Air Purifier.
The literature for this air purifier specifically says that it uses ozone molecules to clean the air and that it is not available in California.
There is no one trying to hide anything here.
The device is a miniature ozone machine that you plug directly into an outlet.
And the reason they can get away with selling it is that it does not create enough ozone to be considered a breathing hazard.
And to be fair, any air purifier that has an ionizer, whether it be a negative ion generator, a ultraviolet light, photocatalyst, or plasma,
All create a small amount of ozone that is considered to be negligible because it is not enough to be dangerous to breathe.
And though these plug-in air purifiers are made to simply place them into an outlet and leave them, there is nothing saying that that is the way it has to be done.
If you don’t want the chance of breathing in ozone, even at a very low level, but you do like the ideal of what ozone can accomplish as far as killing germs and viruses,
Turning the air purifier on when you are not in the house and turning it off when you are is always an option.
Thunderstorm Air Purifier- Are they effective?
Plug-in air purifiers are very small air purifiers that will clean a very small space. They do what they say they do but on a very small level.
Personally, I don’t think the effectiveness of a small plug-in air purifier is worth the money that they are asking for them.
And I don’t really have an outlet that I am ready to completely devote to one of these contraptions.
But that being said, if I’m going to spend the large amount of money on a full sized air purifier, I would want something that has the optional ionizer when I need it.
But just when you thought it was safe to come out of the water,
