Negative ion generators - malarkey? or effective way?

Are these truly beneficial for health and mood, or are they snake oil?

I've been looking at getting one of these:
http://www.negative-ion-generators.com/well-being.php

 

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Baloney.

 

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No they are not. I don't know anything about that particular model but most of them also produce ozone which is harmful.

 

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I am going to have a similar device installed in my furnace, in place of the paper filter, because of allergies. I have used small versions, and they are great. It attracts whatever dust is in the air to a metal plate, which you just have to wash every so often.

 

It's just a air filter basically.

 

Yeah, electrostatic air filter.

 

thanks

yeah, I suspected as much.

 

Can you prove that?

 

I don't know if negative ion generators produce a sense of well being or not, and that is probably an extremely subjective observation anyway. One thing that they do is impart a charge on all nearby airborne particles, causing them to form a precipitate layer on the nearest grounded object. Run one next to a wall for a few weeks and you'll have a thin layer of microscopic grime ingrained so well into your paint that you'll need sanding paper to get it out completely. I'd avoid them but YMMV.

Be advised that the plate surfaces of electrostatic precipitators get saturated with grime pretty quickly, and the EP loses effectiveness rapidly as this happens. They work great until then, though.

That ozone is harmful, or that badly-designed negative ion generators produce it? Both are true, and this is corroborated anywhere you care to look so I won't bother linking to sources.

Read about those gimmicky Ionic Breeze purifiers that Sharper Image sold for a while - the early models produced copious quantities of O3, especially when the charge wires got dirty and started to generate a corona discharge. New models have a post-grid catalyst in them to convert 2(O3) -> 3(O2).

 

filter air pretty good...but from what I hear it makes men sterile...the ozone molecule that is

 

Ozone cleanses the air of biotics that cause foul odor and disease because the allotrope results in the formation of hydroxyl (OH-) ions upon contact with water vapor. This is accelerated in the presence of shortwave UV. Hydroxyl ions react with just about anything organic. When they're airborne, they slam into airborne bacteria and organisms, killing them by puncturing the cellular plasma membrane.

Alternately, ozone molecules are extremely reactive in their own right, and will relinquish their third oxygen to anything they can. They'll oxidize metals in short order, and are very corrosive. They'll also react with airborne organisms, killing them by changing their chemical composition.

The problem with indoor ozone is that concentrations of ozone radicals above a certain level (the FDA sets the limit at 0.05 PPM) means that some of those radicals and hydroxyls will find their way into your lungs. Instead of reacting with living stuff in the air, they'll be reacting with stuff inside your body. In high concentrations, ozone can degrade lung function over time by slowly killing the lung tissue (alveoli) that allows gas exchange.

Ozone air and water purification is extremely effective, and used in many different industries, in areas that are universally inhabitated. Ozone doesn't make you sterile.

 

thank you

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But is that 0.05 PPM of ozone really does not damage lungs?

 

Not enough to worry about it. The concentrations that will really hurt you are the ones that are strong enough to smell clearly. 0.05 PPM is well below most peoples' threshold of detection.