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`They bill it out as a wonder machine but is it...?

Ozone can be a very useful tool to rid homes and buildings of odors. But the levels required to accomplish that can be dangerous to your health as many studies confirm.

Representatives of the companies that sell ozone units usually claim that ozone penetrates walls and floors is of course, false. Mold was still thriving on dresses, shoes and other articles of clothing tightly packed in a 10 X 10 room where the ozone machine was blasting away for years.

The problem is this: If there is any supply of moisture, ozone is useless against mold growth. For example, it won't eliminate molds that grow up under toilet rings or under the lid on the tank. It won't stop mold growth where faucet heads are screwed in. It won't stop it from growing in a shower where only periodic exposure to water is likely.

Furniture with certain types of glues, color pictures, and even some dyes in fabrics may deteriorate rapidly with ozone units anywhere in the house.

So my advice is this: Ozone in the home can be a good thing for slowing mold proliferation but first consider that you're wasting your money if you haven't done everything to eliminate the source of mold growth which is moisture. For example, if you have a leaking roof the ozone isn't going to help.

It is effective at controlling some mold growth where there isn't a source or moisture and air flows freely. But remember, neither the ionizer nor the ozone has never been shown to penetrate walls or even thick clothing.

Using Ozone over long periods may turn your home into a petrie dish. After I turned off the ozone machine, I had no problems with mold growth ...in fact, I now have less mold growth than when the machine was running.

We had a 11' x 11' room with 12' of glass in a corner window and with the Ozone maxed for 3000 square feet... mold still freely grew and prospered during the winter months when the walls would occassionally get damp. So prolific was the mold growth that molds were found growing on our clothing.

A year and a half after our ozone machine fizzled... we have a healthier environment... practically no black mold anywhere especially under toilet rims and the benifit is we don't have foam and rubber based materials (including rubber based glues) deteriorating because of ozone exposure. In my mother's house, antique furniture was rapidly falling apart because rubber based glues deteriorated quickly with ozone exposure. In my studio, expensive microphone shields fell apart, key bushings that guide the keys on my synthesizers rotted away and the foam in my keyboard cases as well... all this accelerated deterioration caused many problems. My tape decks suffered tremendously... I lost two cassette decks and a VCR to ozone. It drastically accelerated the deterioration of pinch rollers on tape recorders neutralized glue that held little brake shoes on their mounts.

Representatives of the company that sells these units make unsubstantiated claims to get you to buy. They claim that ozone kills molds in walls even in cinderblock... these claims are false. And contrary to making a heathier environment, over extended periods, studies have shown that ozone can exaccerbate respiratory problems.

It was wonderful to walk into the house and smell that fresh air but to many people it smelled more like a dentists office. Some visitors and friends even had adverse reactions to the high levels which you don't think are that high because your receptors have acclamated to the abnormally high levels. For every visitor who liked the smell there was one who didn't like it.

Yes, ozone is one of natures ways of cleaning things up, but nature only uses trace levels to do its job. My unit had an automatic level control that was designed to maintain a level similar to outdoor levels. When set to automatic, the unit was useless. It neither controlled black mold growth nor did it freshen the air. Only when I turned the automatic mode off and cranked it up did I begin to smell the freshness in the air.

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