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Ozone
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Scientific
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Much-maligned ozone can rid your home or office of modern
pollution that can be more dangerous than outside air.
By Ron Rendleman
Most folks know ozone by name, especially since the upper
atmosphere’s protective ozone layer began disappearing. But a
lot of misinformation, conjured up to further private agendas,
would have you believe ozone is the bad guy of ground-level
pollution.
True, ozone is present in smog, partly because the processes
that create pollution also create ozone. When sunlight strikes
industrial or automotive pollution, oxygen atoms are stripped
from the pollutant molecules and form peroxy radicals—like
nitrous oxide, nitric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide.
At the same time the freed oxygen atoms bond with the free
oxygen in the air and form ozone. The more pollution, the more
ozone.
But demonizing ozone is like blaming the fireman for the fire.
Without ozone, pollution would render cities uninhabitable.
Nature creates tremendous amounts of ozone each day with the
help of ultraviolet rays of the sun or electrical discharges of
thunderstorms that neutralize many biological problems like
bacteria, viruses, mold or chemical out-gassing, and to some
extent, man-made pollution. Take a walk after a thunderstorm and
notice the clean smell in the air—that’s ozone at work.
So what exactly is ozone? It’s stable oxygen O2 that has picked
up an extra atom of oxygen and becomes O3. Scientists call it
activated oxygen. At 20-plus miles above Earth, the ozone layer
plays a crucial geophysical role in protecting people from
excessive solar UV radiation.
Discovered in the 1840s, it wasn’t until 1906 that the first
ozone water purification facility was built in France. Today
there are over 2,000 similar plants worldwide. Recently Los
Angeles built the largest ozone purification plant in the world.
The city chose ozone over chlorine because the latter has a bad
health record.
Chlorine has been found to cause various illnesses, from nose
and eye irritation to possibly even cancer. A few years ago more
than 100 people living in Milwaukee died, and over 400,000
became ill in one cryptosporidium outbreak that chlorine failed
to control.
The fact that ozone is a powerful air disinfectant is
undisputed. Twin City Testing Labs in Minnesota demonstrated a
steady decline in live strains of infectious micro-organisms in
four hours with as little as .05 ppm of ozone. These germs
incubating in dirty air ducts could be projected to be
completely eliminated in 24 hours from the lab’s data. It has
been argued that the same disinfecting action takes place in the
human sinus cavities where invading microbes first take hold.
Many people, especially the elderly, will retreat in doors,
thinking they can avoid toxins from city air pollution, or if
they are informed, from the products of chemtrails spewed out in
recent years at 25,000 feet by tanker planes. But they may not
be escaping at all.
As far back as 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency told
Congress in hearings that indoor pollution is one of the
nation’s most important environmental health problems. They
found that most homes have airborne concentrations of hazardous
and toxic chemicals two to five times higher than outdoors. In a
five-year study, many homes even had pollution levels 70 times
higher inside than outside! Today’s building methods and codes
and the demand for energy conservation have created
super-insulated airtight indoor spaces. Lower heating and
cooling costs result, but natural air cleaning agents like ozone
stay outside while pollution is trapped inside.
Two noted scientists, Drs. Gurbermskill and Dmitriev. found that
air conditioning in office buildings caused workers to complain
of headaches, weakness and oxygen deprivation that led to
illness, and that colds, rheumatism and cardiovascular disorders
significantly in creased with conditioned air even in the
absence of typical indoor air pollution.
The average home today contains more chemicals than were found
in a typical chemistry lab at the turn of the century, much of
it stored under kitchen and bathroom sinks—from bug sprays to
detergents to oven cleaners. Most poisonings happen over a long
period of time by daily exposure to toxins that enter the body
through mouth or skin, and significantly, through breathing air
loaded with chemical out-gassing.
In a study conducted over a 15-year period, women who worked at
home had a 54 percent higher death rate from cancer than women
who worked away from home. The reason? Daily exposure to
hazardous chemicals in ordinary household products.
What are just some of the toxins the EPA and other researchers
found in inside air?
- Benzene from paint, new carpet, new drapes and
upholstery
- Ammonia in tobacco smoke and cleaning supplies
- Chloroform from paint, new carpet, new drapes and
upholstery
- Formaldehyde from tobacco smoke, plywood, cabinets,
furniture, particleboard, office dividers, new carpet, new
drapes, wallpaper, etc.
- Sulphur dioxide, cyanide, and carbon monoxide from
tobacco smoke
- Trichlorethylene from paints, glues, furniture and
wallpaper
- Carbon tetrachloride from paints, new drapes, new carpet
and cleaning supplies
- Nitrogen dioxide from stoves, furnaces
- Radon gas entering through foundations
- Pollen from plants and trees
- Mold spores from moisture and bacteria
- Dust mites from dust and bacteria
- Bacteria from all areas of the home
Exposure to these chemicals resulted in: headaches, memory loss,
slow poisoning pulmonary irritation, fatigue, drowsiness, eye,
skin and nasal irritation, dizziness, depression, respiratory
irritation, gynecological problems, shortness of breath, cancer
and bronchial constriction.
For the first time in history, it’s safer to be in the
wilderness than in your own home.
It’s alarming that indoor air has become so contaminate,
especially when children are considered. Physiologically, they
are more vulnerable to toxic vapors be cause of their higher
metabolic rate. They breathe in more than twice as much oxygen
(and therefore toxins) relative to body size than adults. They
are more active, which increases their breathing rate and they
play close to the floor where heavier pollutants settle. Modern
school buildings that are shut tight have the same problems.
These findings are not comforting. But there is good news: a few
years ago some astute scientists reasoned that just as nature
uses ozone to protect life on Earth, it might be possible to
produce ozone electronically for indoor protection against
polluted air and water. Small portable generators were designed
to decontaminate a whole house.
The inventors were surprised to discover that ozone would
remove, in hours, and sometimes minutes, very tough odor
problems like smoke damage from fire, pet smells and stale
tobacco odors often found in public places.
Practically overnight, the $430 billion food industry began
using ozone to protect produce from spoiling in transport by
sanitizing packaging materials or adding to water to wash food.
Meat packers found placing an ozone machine in a cooler kept
meat fresher much longer.
Myron James, Technology Center Manager, said: "Ozone is very
efficient in killing pathogens and spoilage organisms, and its
use by the food industry will be welcomed as another tool to
ensure the production of safe and wholesome foods."
Far from being a "bad guy," properly used ozone is a great
remedy, even a Godsend perhaps, for modern society’s
ever-increasing contaminated air and water.™
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