fa: ionized air anyone?

Hi, Bill. I have one at the plant that is used to blow wash water off printed circuit boards. We are VERY careful about ESD. Moving air creates static electricity. This gun creates both positive and negative charged ions that neutralize the charge created by the compressed air. The gun on the end of the tube has a trigger switch that controls the air and the electric charges. The air supply to the unit is dried and also goes through a large paper filter unit. There is also a little glass filter on the unit itself.

Paul

I had an Ionic Breeze air purifier. It killed my parakeets.

Hi, Bill. I have one at the plant that is used to blow wash water off printed circuit boards. We are VERY careful about ESD. Moving air creates static electricity. This gun creates both positive and negative charged ions that neutralize the charge created by the compressed air. The gun on the end of the tube has a trigger switch that controls the air and the electric charges. The air supply to the unit is dried and also goes through a large paper filter unit. There is also a little glass filter on the unit itself.

Paul

Also useful in packaging plants that "cellophane" packets. The film is cut to length, then the carton is forced through the film sheet and folded around it before being heat welded. If the humidity is low the film sheet can develop a life of its own and jump damned near anywhere. A stream of ionised air conducts the charge away and solves a lot of problems.

Ozone is known to be toxic. And I gather that birds do have more sensitive lungs. Some info here:

You can dig around for more.

I use this style of air purifier to get rid of foul :-) smells mainly. Does a great job. Just wouldn't want to have any living critters in the room when the machine is pumping ozone.

DOC Something about robots...

I did find info about ozone and birds, after it was too late. The paper included with the poison gas emitter only briefly mentioned ozone (about one sentence) as causing the clean fresh smell after a thunderstorm.

Same room, only about 10 feet between their cage and the death machine. Thanks so much, Sharper Image.

Whoever buys Bill's unit, DON'T breathe the output.

snip

since this unit is intended for blowing off stuff in a clean room, I suppose one might assume that the end user will use it for it's intended purpose rather than as a component in a breathing apparatus.

Should the end user don an oxygen mask if he's blowing off stuff all day for $10 an hour? I used my Ionic Breeze for its intended purpose too.

Everything is known to be toxic. It's all in the concentration and/or dose.

The auction says this produces 1 part ozone per BILLION parts of air 18" from the gun @ 15 psi... a meaningless spec as far as actual O? production is concerned unless you want to do a bunch of math, but somewhat relevant as far as the units for OSHA limits. OSHA says you can work for 8 hours in an environment with 100 times that concentration. Ozone generators I've owned generally spec O? production in grams (or hundreds of milligrams) per hour. Concentration depends on volume of air in the room and how fast the ozone breaks down into O? again.

I once tried using it to kill off mildew in a travel trailer. Ran a 400mg/hr unit for several days. It wasn't enough. The trailer smelled nice immediately following treatment, but a few days later, the mildew smell returned.

Doesn't harm living critters of variety dog, cat, or human.

The EPA says you're wrong.

"Relatively low amounts can cause chest pain, coughing, shortness of breath, and throat irritation. Ozone may also worsen chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma and compromise the ability of the body to fight respiratory infections."

Thanks. The EPA is in complete agreement with what I've written, and thanks to your link, I now know that the FDA and NIOSH are as well, in addition to my earlier reference to OSHA.

"Relatively low amounts" is completely meaningless. Look at the numbers at the above link. Now look at the numbers in my post you replied to. 1 part per BILLION doesn't come anywhere close to any of the numbers you implicitly cite.

Again, "Everything is known to be toxic. It's all in the concentration and/or dose."

"The concentrations reported above were adjusted to exclude that portion of the ozone concentration brought in from the outdoors. Indoor concentrations of ozone brought in from outside are typically 0.01- 0.02 ppm, but could be as high as 0.03 - 0.05 ppm (Hayes, 1991; U.S. EPA,

1996b; Weschler et al., 1989, 1996; Zhang and Lioy; 1994). If the outdoor portion of ozone were included in the indoor concentrations reported above, the concentrations inside would have been correspondingly higher, increasing the risk of excessive ozone exposure."

"Many factors affect ozone concentrations including the amount of ozone produced by the machine(s), the size of the indoor space, the amount of material in the room with which ozone reacts, the outdoor ozone concentration, and the amount of ventilation. These factors make it difficult to control the ozone concentration in all circumstances."

Steve Ackman: "Doesn't harm living critters of variety dog, cat, or human."

EPA: "When inhaled, ozone can damage the lungs"

"Decreases in lung function"

"Aggravation of asthma"

"Throat irritation and cough"

"Chest pain and shortness of breath"

"Inflammation of lung tissue"

"Higher susceptibility to respiratory infection"

"While high concentrations of ozone in air may sometimes be appropriate in these circumstances,

*conditions should be sufficiently controlled to* *insure that no person or pet becomes exposed* "

Good luck.

I found a deal for you. Go ahead. Ionic Breeze Quadra Silent Air Purifier - $75 (West LA)

"Quiet and you can smell the fresh air"

Thanks, but I've read nothing good about that particular brand. The ozone generators I already have work fine (except for killing deeply embedded mold & mildew, as upthread), and I didn't pay that for brand new units. Matter of fact, two of the units I have together didn't run me as much as your "deal."

But do they match the Ionic Breeze from Sharper Image? The ozone issue is just the start. Grimy walls, drapes, furniture is icing on the cake!

"However, some ozone generators are manufactured with an "ion generator" or "ionizer" in the same unit. An ionizer is a device that disperses negatively (and/or positively) charged ions into the air. These ions attach to particles in the air giving them a negative (or positive) charge so that the particles may attach to nearby surfaces such as walls or furniture"

"Ozone air cleaners remove nothing from the environment. Bacteria are neutralized and all airborne pollutants are electrically charged so that they are attracted to the floors and walls of the room. The pollutants will continue to build up on the floors and walls till they are removed by some other means."

I would certainly hope not.

Exactly. BUT. Neither do they ADD anything to the environment as would, say, sodium hypochlorite or a Lysol type spray, or any other common "disinfectant" or "deodorizer" would. You take the oxygen that's already in the air, convert it to ozone, which reacts with certain particulates. At the end of the day, you have no more and no less in the room than when you started. Same exact mass, just in an altered state.

Yes, and you think that's a "bad" thing?

The point is to get odors, smoke, bacteria, whatever out of the air. Thank you for pointing that out. Breathe crap now, or wipe/vacuum it up later or clean it off collection plates, or throw it out with HEPA filters. I've never seen it "attracted" to floors and walls; more like the oxidized particulates are now heavier than they were, and tend to drift to the floor.

I can't really tell what your argument is here. I guess you prefer crap IN your lungs, as opposed to on a dust cloth? Or is it your position that the benefits of ozone you mention aren't worth any potential risk of creating "too much" ozone? Or that any amount of ozone is "too much"; even one part per BILLION? Or is it your position that ozone is fine for people and pets in OSHA/EPA concentrations as long as "pets" doesn't include birds?

You keep disagreeing (I think), but you have yet to state your position.

More goes on than meets the eye. I'm just giving my own experience with the Ionic Breeze as an example.