Masks will Continue to be Used for Pollen

Controversy on Ionizers Continues

History of Ionizer Law Suits and Bankruptcies

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Masks will Continue to be Used for Pollen

The masks people have been wearing to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 are also good at filtering out pollen and other allergens floating in the air. For people with allergic rhinitis or allergic asthma, who develop symptoms after breathing in allergens, masks can be really helpful.

Even before COVID-19 caused everyone to start wearing masks, some patients with seasonal allergies used masks on days with extremely high pollen counts or when doing yardwork. Pollen grains can be as small as about 10 micrometers, but surgical masks can catch particles as small as 3 micrometers. Other medical masks can be even more effective. Even the cloth masks most people are wearing in outdoor settings can make a difference, especially those with multiple layers of fabric.

An allergy is essentially the immune system overreacting to something that is not a threat. When pollen comes into contact with the mucus membrane inside the nose, for example, the immune response creates inflammation, which in turn causes congestion, sneezing, and excess mucus. If you can prevent an allergen like pollen from getting inside your nose, you won’t have that response.

Of course, face masks don’t protect your eyes. If you have allergic conjunctivitis—eye allergies—you probably are going to benefit less from wearing a mask over your nose and mouth.

With so many people wearing masks outdoors this year, patients have reported fewer seasonal allergy issues. However, an increase in indoor allergies has been seen as people added dogs or cats to their household and spent more time at home. Our houses are the one place most people aren’t wearing a mask, and more patients are seeking treatment for allergies to animals, dust, and mold.

Even for seasonal allergies, masks aren’t a great long-term solution. Many people dealing with allergies also have skin conditions like eczema or acne that can be made worse by wearing a mask for a prolonged time. The most effective way to treat an allergy is with allergy shots, or immunotherapy. Over several years of treatment, this can actually cure an allergy instead of just treating the symptoms.

Controversy on Ionizers Continues

Boeing tested two kinds of ionization technologies — like those widely adopted in schools hoping to combat Covid-19 — to determine how well each killed germs on surfaces and decided that neither was effective enough to install on its commercial planes.

Boeing noted in its conclusion that “air ionization has not shown significant disinfection effectiveness.”

Companies that make the air purifiers say they emit charged ions, or “activated oxygen,” that are said to inactivate bacteria and viruses in the air. Boeing did not test the technology’s effectiveness in the air, only on surfaces. It also used a “surrogate” for the virus that causes Covid-19.

The Boeing study has been cited in a federal lawsuit filed by a Maryland consumer against Global Plasma Solutions, maker of the “needlepoint bipolar ionization” technology that a Boeing spokesperson said its engineers tested.

The proposed class-action lawsuit says GPS makes “deceptive, misleading, and false” claims about its products based on company-funded studies that are “not applicable to real world conditions.”

A GPS spokesperson said the lawsuit is “baseless and misleading” and that the company will aggressively defend against it. He added that Boeing “researchers deemed the study ‘inconclusive.’”

“Plaintiff’s Complaint throws the proverbial kitchen sink at GPS in the hopes that something might stick,” the air purifier company says in court documents filed May 24 as part of its motion to dismiss the proposed class action. “But it is devoid of any concrete, specific allegations plausibly alleging that GPS made even a single false or deceptive statement about its products.”

The plaintiff’s case cites a KHN investigation that found that more than 2,000 U.S. schools had bought air-purifying technology, including ionizers. Many schools used federal funds to purchase the products. In April, a covid-19 commission task force from The Lancet, a leading medical journal, composed of top international health, education and air-quality experts, called various air-cleaning technologies — ionization, plasma and dry hydrogen peroxide — “often unproven.”

Boeing said in its report that with ionization there is “very little external peer reviewed research in comparison to other traditional disinfection technologies” such as chemical, UV and thermal disinfection and HEPA filters, all of which it relies on to sanitize its planes.

The controversy is getting the attention of school officials from coast to coast. They include one California superintendent who cited the lawsuit and switched off that district’s more than 400 GPS devices.

For worried parents and academic air-quality experts who regard industry-backed studies with skepticism, the Boeing report heightens their concerns.

“This [study] is totally damning,” said Delphine Farmer, a Colorado State University associate professor who specializes in atmospheric and indoor chemistry who reviewed the Boeing report. “It should just raise flags for absolutely everyone.”

GPS pointed to another study, one conducted in the weeks before Boeing began its study in September, by a third-party lab. It completed a study of two devices — powered by GPS technology — that another aviation company now markets to clean the air and surfaces in planes.

That study looked at the effect of the ionizers on the virus that causes Covid-19 when used on aluminum, a type of plastic called Kydex and leather. The test report shows it was conducted in a sealed, 20-by-8-foot chamber, with airflow speeds of 2,133 feet per minute — or about 24 mph. At the end of 30 minutes, “the overall average decrease in active virus” was more than 99 percent.

“Given the specific environment this was tested in, the quality of the materials, and the method in which the virus was dispersed, it is safe to say that the bipolar ionization system used in this experiment has the ability to deactivate SARS-CoV-2 with the given ion counts,” the Aug. 7 report from the third-party lab says.

The following month, Boeing began its own testing of GPS devices and another kind of ionization technology.

The Boeing study cites a GPS white paper that says its device killed 99.68 percent of E. coli bacteria in one test in 15 minutes. GPS records show the test was done on bacteria suspended in the air. The Boeing engineers used the company’s technology to try to kill E. coli on surfaces in a lab but found “no observable reduction in viability” after an hour.

The Boeing study notes it “was unable to replicate supplier results in terms of antimicrobial effectiveness.”

GPS cautioned that the Boeing tests examined disinfection of surfaces, not the air: “While GPS products do have the ability to help reduce pathogens in air and on surfaces, GPS products are not chemical surface disinfectants.”

Yet surface tests comprise half of the test results the company lists on its “pathogen reduction” webpage, a GPS spokesperson confirmed.

Boeing researchers found another lab result they could not replicate: While the GPS white paper reported a 96.24 percent reduction in Staphylococcus aureus in 30 minutes, Boeing engineers found “no reductions” in the bacteria in an hourlong test.

Boeing found minimal or no reduction on surfaces in four other pathogens it tested with GPS ionizers for an hour in a Huntsville, Alabama, lab.

Notably, Boeing’s tests in Huntsville detected no hazardous ozone gas from the GPS unit, the report says. The “corona discharge” ionization technology from another vendor that Boeing also studied did emit ozone at levels that “exceeded regulatory standards.”

A University of Arizona lab test described in the Boeing study found that the GPS device showed a 66.7% inactivation of a common cold coronavirus on a surface after an hour of exposure at up to 62,000 negative ions per cubic centimeter. That ion level is far higher than the amount of ions company leaders have said the devices tend to deliver to a typical room. Those levels have ranged from 2,000 to 10,000 and even up to 30,000 ions per cubic centimeter when an HVAC system is running, according to records provided to KHN and statements made by company representatives.

In a presentation during a Berkeley Unified School District meeting in California, a physicist who appeared with executives said a level of more than 60,000 ions per cubic centimeter “has been shown to be not healthy.”

GPS noted that Boeing deemed the 66.7 percent effectiveness rate in killing the common cold virus "statistically significant." A GPS spokesperson said the result validates needlepoint bipolar ionization’s “effectiveness against certain pathogens.” In its report, Boeing called the test results “inconclusive” due to “lack of experimental confirmation.”

A GPS spokesperson also highlighted a passage in the Boeing report’s conclusion that said: “There remains significant interest in air ionization due to lack of byproduct production, minimal risk to human health, minimum risk to airplane materials and systems, and the potential for persistent disinfection of air and surfaces under specific flow conditions.”

The Boeing study concluded in January. In April, GPS published the results of additional tests it funded at a third-party lab showing its technology “is highly effective in neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen.”

Boeing engineers said their study highlights the need for those in the ionization business to standardize the evaluation of the technology “to allow comparison to other proven methods of disinfection.”

On May 7, law firms representing a man who spent over $750 on a GPS air cleaner in Texas filed the “fraudulent concealment” lawsuit against GPS in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

The lawsuit claims that the defendant’s “misrepresentations and false statements were woven into an extensive and long-term advertising campaign ... accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“People are being victimized by these companies for profit,” said Mickey Mills, a Houston attorney for the plaintiff. “People are scared because of covid, and they capitalize on it.”

In filing a motion to dismiss the case, GPS told the court the lawsuit was an “attempt to distort the facts and assert baseless claims, doing grave damage to GPS’s business in the process.”

The GPS court document also says the disclaimers on its website “make it unreasonable for any consumers to believe that the efficacy demonstrated in GPS studies will necessarily be the same for their particular application.”

It asserts that most of the GPS statements identified in the plaintiff’s lawsuit — such as “safe to use” and “cleaner air” — amount to “non-actionable puffery” as they are “vague generalities and statements of opinion.”

The lawsuit spurred a Newark, California, school district to turn off its GPS devices, according to a May 18 memo from Superintendent Mark Triplett to district families. The district spent nearly $360,000 on the devices, an April board presentation shows.

The roughly 5,500-student district bought GPS units for every school HVAC system, Triplett said in a March school board meeting in which he noted the technology “arguably is much better than any filter.” By May, he said in the memo the district had become aware of the lawsuit “alleging the misrepresentation” of the devices and would continue to monitor the situation.

A company spokesperson noted GPS appreciates Newark’s concerns and has reached out to share additional data and answer questions, as well as extended “an offer to conduct onsite testing to verify the safety of this technology and the added benefits.”

Megan McMillen, vice president of the Newark Teachers Association and a special education preschool teacher, said it was disheartening to know the cash-strapped district in the Bay Area spent so much on the devices instead of other safety measures or services to mitigate learning loss after the chaotic pandemic year.

“For such a big chunk of that [money] going to something potentially ineffective ... is really frustrating,” she said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/do-air-purifiers-protect-against-covid-lawsuit-says-company-makes-n1269881

 

History of Ionizer Law Suits and Bankruptcies

Madison Pauly of Mother Jones has compiled a comprehensive history of ionizer lawsuits and bankruptcies over the years with Sharper Image being one of the most publicized.

The new universe of air scrubbers goes by a lot of names—bipolar ionization, photocatalytic oxidation, “organic air”—but some experts refer to them as “additive” purifiers. They all share the same underlying principle: Rather than simply subtracting matter from the air using a filter, they add molecules to create chemical reactions that, at least in theory, eliminate airborne contaminants. Those molecules supposedly float out into a room and destroy viruses, break down harmful gases, or make particles stick together, causing them to get trapped in filters or settle on surfaces, where they can’t be inhaled. Some manufacturers emphasize that their process mimics the atmospheric activity found near crashing waves, mountaintops, and waterfalls.

The reality is far less rosy. In interviews with Mother Jones, nearly a dozen chemists, engineers, and indoor air-quality experts laid out a range of possible dangers. First there’s the matter of the molecules that additive purifiers release into air, which can include ozone or free radicals. Ozone, a highly reactive form of oxygen, has long been known to damage lungs and worsen chronic respiratory diseases. While some purifiers are certified to produce undetectable levels of ozone, others produce much more. And little oversight exists to keep levels in check. Free radicals, meanwhile, have an odd number of electrons, which makes them unstable and greedy. When they meet other molecules, they grab their electrons, transforming into something new. While purifiers rely on those transformations to destroy unwanted gases, some research suggests free radicals may damage lung tissue when inhaled.

Experts also worry the machines run the risk of creating harmful byproducts like formaldehyde, a probable carcinogen at high concentrations. A federal class-action lawsuit filed in May against one of Plasma Air’s competitors, Global Plasma Solutions (GPS), alleges that bipolar ionizers “make the air worse for people” by causing toxic chemicals to form. In two recent studies conducted in China, researchers found that ionizing air purifiers tested in schools reduced particulate matter but also appeared to cause health problems. “Indoor air is a complex chemical soup,” explains Jeff Siegel, a University of Toronto civil engineering professor who has spent decades researching air cleaners. “If you’re operating one of these devices, the most charitable thing I can say is you are doing an uncontrolled experiment on the air in your building,” Siegel says. “In some environments, this could be really hazardous.”

In response to questions about scientists’ critiques, Plasma Air and GPS pointed to industry certifications saying their products emit negligible or no ozone. They also note test results from commercial labs that concluded their machines do not form chemical byproducts. (Four other companies did not respond to requests for comment or declined to answer questions about the scientists’ concerns.) GPS has filed defamation lawsuits against two of its critics, indoor air engineering consultants who said the company’s purifiers are unproven and potentially harmful, and that its product testing was faulty.

Manufacturers often pay commercial labs to test their products, resulting in impressive-sounding claims like a 99 percent reduction in airborne coronavirus. Meanwhile, peer-reviewed research does not show additive air purifiers consistently working under real-world conditions without forming potentially harmful byproducts, according to six academic experts I spoke with and a review of scientific articles provided by manufacturers. And recent research indicates that some machines on the market may be far less effective than manufacturers claim. Scientists have only begun to study the chemical mechanisms by which the purifiers actually work indoors, says Timothy Bertram, a University of Wisconsin chemist leading a study of bipolar ionizers. Without that understanding, it’s hard to evaluate what, if anything, additive purifiers do when they’re installed inside an air vent or plugged in at the back of a classroom. So far, Bertram’s study has found no evidence of the ionizers reducing aerosols.

“The theory behind these devices is interesting,” says Delphine Farmer, an atmospheric chemist at Colorado State University. “It’s just it hasn’t been demonstrated to work in real-world environments.”

At best, some experts say, additive purifiers are unnecessary, especially considering the range of proven alternatives like filters and increasing the flow of air coming in from outside. At worst, buyers hoping to fight COVID could be lulled into a false sense of security while adding harmful chemicals to the air. Yet over the last year, additive air cleaners have been installed in prisons, cruise ships, and meatpacking plants—all places where the coronavirus is known to spread rapidly. They are particularly attractive to schools, where administrators are under enormous pressure to resume in-­person learning by the next school year. Those schools are also loaded with pandemic stimulus cash—$13 billion from 2020’s CARES Act, and an additional $130 billion in President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan. The familiar faces delivering the sell don’t hurt: Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, was peddling an additive air cleaner to his state legislature last fall.

Former CDC Director Robert Redfield recently joined manufacturer Big Ass Fans, which is selling fans with an additive purifier on the tip of each blade. In March, ActivePure Technologies, a Texas-based additive purifier company with a multilevel marketing arm, announced it was hiring a new chief medical and science adviser: Dr. Deborah Birx, Donald Trump’s former coronavirus response coordinator.

And so, across the country, school districts drawn in by promising-sounding manufacturer data and slick marketing are now spending anywhere from several thousand dollars to a few million to install additive air purifiers. GPS says its devices are employed by 1,300 K–12 schools and on 400 US college campuses. Both Plasma Air and ActivePure say hundreds of schools use their devices.

According to a tally maintained by Marwa Zaatari, an indoor air engineering consultant, public and private schools in at least 41 states have installed air cleaners she’s concerned about. Marietta, Georgia, put ionizers on school buses. The school district in Sacramento, California, spent more than $6 million last year to purchase and install additive purifiers. “When the CARES Act dollars came through in late August, we saw it as a perfect opportunity to pursue ionization,” Greg Cole, a top administrator for Anoka-Hennepin Schools, one of Minnesota’s largest districts, says in a video posted to the district’s YouTube channel. The district spent more than $1.4 million on additive purifiers.

In January, the epidemic task force at ASHRAE, the professional organization that sets standards for HVAC, issued a recommendation that buildings should “only use air cleaners for which evidence of effectiveness and safety is clear.” The CDC urges consumers to “do their homework” on bipolar ionization: “In the absence of an established body of evidence reflecting proven efficacy under as-used conditions, the technology is still considered by many to be an ‘emerging technology.’”

But for many schools, installing high-tech air cleaners to fight an airborne virus still seems like the aggressive countermeasures that parents and staff clamor for. Richard Corsi, dean of the engineering and computer science college at Portland State University and an advocate for better-ventilated schools, says he’s fielded many queries from districts about bipolar ionizers and similar purifiers. “I just keep telling school district officials, ‘Stick to proven technologies,’” Corsi says. “‘Why would you want to risk this?’”

 

Additive air purifiers have been trendy before. In the early 2000s, the Sharper Image—the mall-based purveyor of shiny gadgets—relied on its Ionic Breeze purifier for more than a third of its sales. The device was supposed to generate ions that made contaminants stick to oppositely charged collection plates inside the device. No fan, no noise, just cleaner air. Then Consumer Reports published a series of articles beginning in 2002 finding that Ionic Breeze produced “almost no measurable reduction in airborne particles” but released potentially dangerous levels of ozone as an unintentional byproduct.

The findings spelled disaster for the Sharper Image. Ozone in the upper atmosphere shields humans from ultraviolet rays, but it’s toxic when inhaled, damaging lung tissue and aggravating asthma. The Sharper Image sued Consumer Reports for product disparagement and lost. Then the class actions started. Multiple lawsuits, from Ionic Breeze owners in California, Florida, and Maryland, claimed that the purifiers failed to work as advertised and exposed them to dangerous ozone levels.

After years of litigation, the company was ready to settle, proposing $19 coupons for anyone who owned an Ionic Breeze. But when the judge rejected the offer, the Sharper Image’s stock plummeted. Bankruptcy followed, and the company cited the lawsuits as a cause. The plaintiffs were allotted only a small settlement, but the controversy may have helped pass the country’s first and only prohibition on additive air purifiers: In 2008, California’s Air Resources Board banned air cleaners that emit more than a moderate amount of ozone.

As public knowledge about the dangers of indoor ozone grew, engineers set about redesigning ionizers, trying to avoid releasing significant levels of the gas. Today, manufacturers like Plasma Air and GPS boast that their devices produce tiny levels of ozone, if any at all. Still, small increases in ozone concentrations are associated with increased risk of death from respiratory causes, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which compared 23 years of ozone data in 96 US cities with health outcomes for more than 400,000 patients.

Purifiers never went away—ask anyone who’s lived through the California wildfires—but the past year has brought them back into the national spotlight. In a video posted to ActivePure’s website, Birx explained her decision to join the company as a part-time consultant: “When I was traveling the country, I was able to talk to people and understand what their needs really were, how people really want to feel safe again indoors,” she said. “I was really looking for technology that was science- and data-driven, really working to address that specific issue, to make indoor spaces safe for individuals. ActivePure is one of those companies that has, really, that type of technology.” In a press release, CEO Joe Urso said Birx’s presence would help bring ActivePure devices to “all indoor spaces.”

“God gave humans these air purifiers, and you should not take away that gift.”

Of course, Birx isn’t exactly regarded as a stalwart defender of science. As Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, she became best known for sitting by uncomfortably as her boss wondered aloud about injecting bleach to treat COVID. Since Biden took office, Birx has been doing a series of TV hits to explain what happened, recounting how Trump chewed her out for issuing a dire warning about the coronavirus.

So working for a company that is also in need of image rehabilitation is an interesting choice. ActivePure is descended from Alpine Air Products, Inc., a multilevel marketing company founded in 1986 to sell free-standing air purifiers that intentionally generated ozone to clean the air. In 1990, the state of Minnesota, where Alpine was based, filed a consumer fraud and antitrust lawsuit against the company, alleging it hadn’t warned buyers that the amount of ozone emitted could be harmful. A trial court agreed, and Alpine had to pay consumers damages and restitution.

The company survived, and in 1994 it made $7 million in sales. But its legal problems didn’t go away. In 1995, the Federal Trade Commission told Alpine to stop making “unsubstantiated” claims about its purifiers’ ability to remove pollutants and prevent or relieve allergies, asthma, and colds. About three years later, after the company didn’t heed its warning, the FTC filed suit. A jury found Alpine lacked “competent and reliable scientific evidence” to back up many claims about its product’s effectiveness.

Then, in 2000, at the height of the company’s troubles, Mike Jackson, Alpine’s vice president of marketing—the very division responsible for its bogus claims—formed a new corporation: EcoQuest International. EcoQuest promptly acquired the marketing rights to sell Alpine products, along with its entire network marketing operation.

With the bombastic Jackson as president, EcoQuest grew from a small multilevel marketing firm to a powerhouse. In radio ads, Pat Boone sang the praises of its purifiers, which the company claimed produced less ozone than older versions. Thousands of dealers flocked to the EcoQuest Success Institute in Greeneville, Tennessee, for sales training programs steeped in religious language. Many of its most successful salespeople were “pastors and priests and preachers and evangelists,” Jackson told a Knoxville News Sentinel reporter. (In this sense, Birx, an evangelical, fits right in.) “I don’t believe that the non-Christian crowd should control all the money and should control all the airways and control the radio waves and control all the newspapers,” Jackson said. (When California debated its air purifier regulation, an EcoQuest dealer wept during a public hearing as she described how the company’s product had improved her mother’s breathing. “God gave humans these air purifiers, and you should not take away that gift,” she pleaded.)

By 2004, EcoQuest’s cumulative air purifier sales had reportedly reached $1 billion. That summer, the company acquired a division of another firm that had a pending patent on a related process called photocatalytic oxidation, which involves shining ultraviolet light onto a surface coated with a catalyst. When working as intended, that interaction creates charged clusters of oxygen and hydrogen in the air, as well as free radicals, that break down unwanted gases into water and carbon dioxide. The way the company tells the story, the technique drew on NASA research looking for ways to reduce the buildup of ethylene gas around plants inside a spacecraft’s sealed environment. EcoQuest dubbed the technology ActivePure and got to work selling it.

At least some of the new purifiers still released ozone. But Jackson assured the Knoxville News Sentinel that Alpine’s legal troubles were a thing of the past: “All that stuff was the maturing, the growing of Mike Jackson as a businessman,” he said. “I learned that you don’t make claims unless you have scientific substantiation…It probably was one of the best schools I could have gone to in learning what not to do with my company.”

But in 2009, when sales plummeted amid the recession, EcoQuest went bankrupt. Jackson sold off EcoQuest to Urso, CEO of a family of companies with names like Allergy Buyers Club—and descended from Electrolux, the door-to-door sales heavyweight—that used direct sales to hawk anti-allergy bedding, aromatherapy oils, and vacuum cleaners. (According to a press release, the company signed a deal in 2018 to manufacture purifiers under the brand name the Sharper Image, though Urso says this has not happened.)

The easiest way to increase the flow of clean air at home is to open a window. But that’s not always possible during extreme weather or when outdoor pollution is high. If you’re considering air purifiers, here are the key things you should keep in mind:
 
High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters are a rock-solid way to remove nasty particles, including the coronavirus. Just remember, HEPA filters need to be cleaned and replaced periodically. For contaminants like those produced by gas stoves and cleaning products, you’ll need an activated carbon or other absorbent filter.
 
 Many devices list clean air delivery rates (CADR)—a measurement of the purifier’s ability to remove particles from air—in their product information. Typically, those rates are even broken down by particle type: smoke, dust, and pollen. If you’re choosing a purifier for a specific room, look for ratings greater than or equal to two-thirds of the room’s square footage. If you’re battling wildfire smoke, go stronger. 

Ionizers are supposed to break down unwanted chemicals. But the CDC says these and other additive purifiers are an “emerging technology” that lacks “an established body of peer-reviewed evidence showing proven efficacy and safety under as-used conditions.” If you’re set on buying one, the EPA recommends one that meets UL 2998 standard certification, indicating it produces zero or undetectable levels of ozone. If you already own an ionizing purifier without this certification, you might consider turning off that function.
 
ASHRAE, the professional association for heating and ventilation, urges people only to use air cleaners “for which evidence of effectiveness and safety is clear.” But that can be hard for a layperson to determine. For in-depth advice, check the EPA’s “Guide to Air Cleaners in the Home,” which offers nitty-gritty tips for consumers.

Today, ActivePure is the name of Urso’s flagship company and his signature product, sold both as an HVAC add-on and in free-standing air purifiers. In an email, Urso told Madison that their technology, improved since the EcoQuest days, complies with all federal standards “with respect to efficacy and safety” and reduces net ozone. “Our goal at ActivePure Technologies has been and is simple: finding the best path to clean and safe indoor air,” he wrote. One ActivePure product, the Medical Guardian, which uses a HEPA filter and ionizer with photocatalytic oxidation, has been certified by the FDA as a medical device to remove certain viruses, bacteria, and fungal spores from the air in hospitals and doctors’ offices—indicating it doesn’t produce high ozone levels. A “handful” of the company’s products, Urso added, produce ozone intentionally.

Jackson, for his part, is now a leader in ActivePure’s multilevel marketing arm, which is still going strong. In a June 2020 recruitment webinar titled “How You Earn $100,000 Killing Viruses, Mold, and Mildew!” Jackson suggested that sellers can pay off their mortgage after six months of hawking air purifiers. (Urso says Jackson is an independent distributor whose views do not represent the company.)

Urso’s companies make the jaw-dropping claim that their technology can kill more than 99 percent of airborne coronavirus in three minutes. The powerful oxidants produced by the purifiers “seek and destroy DNA and RNA viruses,” according to some of the company’s marketing language. Sales have quadrupled over the last year, a press release boasts; in one promotional video, Jackson claims they “sold out” 25,000 systems in a single week in 2020. The ActivePure website now lists 39 schools and child care centers it says use its purifiers; “hundreds more,” it claims, “trust” its technology.

As scientists have started to raise alarms, some institutions have reversed course on additive air purifiers. In February, the Sacramento school district pulled photocatalytic oxidation machines from school buildings after a Sacramento Bee investigation led to outcry from the teachers union. Public schools in Montclair, New Jersey, turned off their GPS ionizers after parent objections. And last summer, when a Phoenix megachurch hosting a Trump rally announced it had installed purifiers that could supposedly kill “99 percent of COVID within 10 minutes,” backlash from experts led the state attorney general to issue warning letters to both the church and the company, Clean Air EXP. Each rolled back its claims. (Clean Air EXP rebranded four months later. It now sells under the name PuriFi Labs.)

Yet no US governmental body has attempted to regulate the indoor air cleaner industry systematically. Products that can’t pass California’s ozone test are sold freely in other states; one ActivePure website, for example, serves different homepages to customers outside the state. The FTC has sent warning letters to a handful of air purifier companies making COVID-related claims but has not publicly announced any follow-up action, according to a spokesperson. And while the FDA regulates medical devices, it’s up to companies to decide whether to seek that certification. In an email to Mother Jones, an EPA spokesperson said it keeps an eye on false and misleading claims from air purifier manufacturers but that companies aren’t required to submit safety or efficacy data to the agency. “EPA is concerned about the potential for schools to be victimized,” the spokesperson said. But enforcement, for now, is case by case.

“These products just fall in that gray zone where no government authority is really ready to provide oversight or regulation for them,” Farmer says. “It’s probably not going to happen until someone gets really badly hurt.”

All the scientists Madison spoke with say that the goal should be more peer-reviewed research on what exactly additive cleaners are doing. In the meantime, indoor air-quality experts are urging schools to follow the precautionary principle: “If you don’t understand it, do not use it,” Zaatari says. She’s working on an ASHRAE standard for additive air-cleaner testing and raising money for more research. A handful of scientists recently released an online tool to help convert additive purifier manufacturer data into more informative metrics. Corsi, Stephens, and others have all given webinars cautioning schools to stick to proven methods like increasing the flow of outdoor air and upgrading filters. Farmer, in conversations with school administrators, has recommended they simply duct-tape HEPA filters to box fans: $50 apiece, no risk of byproducts.

And in April, a dozen indoor air-­quality scientists and engineers co-signed an open letter to schools written by Zaatari and another consultant. “Many districts, constrained by varying degrees of limited budgets, deferred maintenance, and pressure to get kids back in school, have already implemented electronic air cleaning devices, relying on incomplete data and exaggerated claims to make a well-intended, but incorrect decision,” they wrote. “Despite the resources invested, we recommend that these districts strongly consider turning off or disabling these electronic air cleaners to prevent unintended harm to building occupants.”

At least one purifier company is firing back at its critics. This spring, GPS filed lawsuits accusing Zaatari and Offermann of defamation and product disparagement. Offermann, who spent decades testing additive air purifiers for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, had self-published a paper titled “Beware: The COVID-19 Snake Oil Salesmen Are Here,” which GPS claims unfairly maligned its test data, according to court papers. In a separate complaint, GPS accused Zaatari of mounting “a systematic campaign designed to smear GPS” on Twitter, in news articles, and during webinars that portrayed ionizers as potentially dangerous—including likening them to cigarettes. “They’re basically suing to try to silence me,” Zaatari told Madision in April. “I’m not going to stop.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/air-purifier-covid-asthma-unproven-science-coronavirus-ionization/