Manufacturers’claims

Manufacturers say that the highly reactive nature of ozone allows it to easily attach to pollution, especially odorous compounds like smoke and organic matter such as viruses, bacteria and mold spores. However, these claims are not backed up by sound science.

Performance against mold and bacteria

Research has found that ozone generators were not effective at stopping mold or bacteria growth in a standard hospital room, and would require unsafe levels of ozone to do the job at all (Dyas, Boughton, & Das, 1983). For mold growth, public health departments do not recommend using ozone generators for clean-up, saying that ozone even at high levels cannot control mold.

Performance against VOCs

You may be asking yourself, if ozone gas is effective at anything, it should work on other gaseous pollutants (specifically volatile organic compounds, or VOCs) right? Well, it might not, unless you wait for thousands of years in some cases. A research study (Boeniger, 1995) analyzed how long it would take to remove 14 of the most common organic compounds found in the air. It was found that at ozone concentrations of 100 ppb, it would take 880+ years for six of these pollutants to be broken down into half of their initial concentrations (half-lives). In fact, it would take more than 4,400 years for formaldehyde! Only one pollutant, styrene, was found to have a half-life of about 4 hours.