Ozone has been referred to as nature's best air purifier.
The sun’s ultraviolet rays and the electrical discharges that occur during lightning storms form ozone. In fact, the fresh clean smell you get after a thunderstorm is ozone. You can often get a whiff of Ozone when you walk near a forest or beside a waterfall.
Every day nature creates tremendous amounts of ozone with the help of the sun’s ultraviolet rays or a thunderstorm’s electrical discharges. This ozone then goes to work neutralizing biological problems like viruses, bacteria and mold and to a large extent, man-made pollution.
Is Ozone Safe?
Ozone, contrary to what you may have been led to believe, is not a chemical component of smog. It’s oxygen that has picked up an extra oxygen atom to become O3. Scientists call it activated oxygen. The third oxygen atom is very unstable and wants to break away. When it comes in contact with a pollutant it splits off and the result is oxidation of the pollutant. (nature's best air purifier)
Yes, ozone at higher concentrations can be dangerous. So is oxygen for that matter. What about water? Fire? Everything can be dangerous if taken to extremes. Fortunately, ozone becomes very irritating to the nose and throat long before it reaches a level that would cause harm.
“Ozone is needed to sustain life on earth. To condemn ozone because of the HIGH levels often found in man made smog would be like ingesting an entire bottle of pills, then condemning the drug as being dangerous.”
http://understandingozone.com/article_response.asp#top
Here is a graphic presentation I put together to give you a bit of an idea about ozone concentrations. Typically we begin to smell ozone in the range of 0.003 to 0.010 ppm, which is well before the level reaches CSA or ASHRAE safety concerns.
Here is what some doctors say about ozone:
"Recent authoritative investigations have established, that pure Ozone is Nontoxic even in concentrations as great as 20 or 50 parts per milliliters of air."
- Clark Thorp, Ph.D., MD
"Pure Ozone is not poisonous in any sense of the word as it breaks down in contact with the mucous membrane, and only Oxygen remains."
- A. Hill, MD
"Ozone is absolutely harmless when used correctly. We have demonstrated this over a period of many years in patients of all ages."
- F. B. Carpenter, MD
Why does the media call ozone "smog"?
The answer is bad science and bad reporting. In fact, you have probably heard weather broadcasters referring to "A bad ozone day" as if ozone was the pollutant spewing out of those smoke stacks in big cities.
Nature produces higher levels of ozone to deal with higher levels of pollution. Since pollution is composed of so many different ingredients, the easiest way to report on it is to state the ozone level, hence the term “Bad ozone day”.
The fact is, there is no safer, effective oxidizing agent to clean polluted air and it’s completely natural! We now know that Ozone is nature’s most powerful disinfectant and can even kill microbial contaminates like E-coli, Candida, Listeria, Staph, Salmonella, Giardia and Cryptosporidium more effectively than conventional disinfectants like chlorine or bleach. In fact, ozone kills E-coli more than 3,000 times faster than chlorine. As I said, ozone is nature's best air purifier.
Now, I would like to introduce you to the next step in air purification; Space Technology - The Final Solution: an
Air Purifier Cleaner.
The sun’s ultraviolet rays and the electrical discharges that occur during lightning storms form ozone. In fact, the fresh clean smell you get after a thunderstorm is ozone. You can often get a whiff of Ozone when you walk near a forest or beside a waterfall.
