Sharper Image Ionic Breeze Air Cleaners

These people just cannot win... (heh!) I had written about the Consumer Reports magazine smack-down of these over-priced gadgets before here and here. Basically, Consumer Reports magazine ran a number of Air Cleaners through some simple quantitative tests and rated them on their effectiveness. The Sharper Image unit (the Ionic Breeze) came in as unacceptable as it failed to clean the air and also added a large amount of Ozone which can cause respiratory distress for some people. The Sharper Image asked CR to retest the Ionic Breeze which they did and still, it failed. The Sharper Image then filed a lawsuit against Consumer Reports only to have it tossed out and they had to pay about $500K court costs and lawyers fees. Well, they are at it again and The Washington Post has the story:

Air Cleaner Dust-up
Upgraded Ionic Breeze Unit Still Fails Sniff Test at Consumer Reports

In its latest review of air purifiers, Consumer Reports (CR) has again recommended against the Ionic Breeze Quadra, despite the addition of a device meant to eliminate some of the ozone emitted by the product. Its manufacturer, Sharper Image, disputes the assessment, saying the magazine's evaluation method is flawed.

The exchange extends a feud between CR and Sharper Image that started two years ago, after the magazine gave a failing grade to an earlier version of the air cleaner. Sharper Image sued Consumers Union, which publishes CR, for libel in 2003 after earlier reports said that the Ionic Breeze performed poorly at removing dust and smoke particles from the air. A federal court dismissed the suit.

CR's October 2005 issue -- which gives the Ionic Breeze "poor" grades for its ability to clean dust and smoke particles from the air -- went to press before the release of the newest Ionic Breeze model, which includes OzoneGuard, a feature that partially clears ozone from the air. CR then published a supplemental report online that gave the OzoneGuard model poor marks.

"Our air-cleaning tests show that the Ionic Breeze with OzoneGuard does a poor job of removing smoke, dust and pollen particles from the air when new and after 500 hours of continuous use," reported the CR update. "While earlier versions of the Ionic Breeze significantly exceeded the ozone limit in the voluntary, industry-standard Underwriters Laboratory test, the Ionic Breeze with OzoneGuard still adds ozone to the air, measuring just within the test limit" of 50 parts per billion (ppb).

The Ionic Breeze is an ionizing air cleaner, which electrically charges airborne particles and traps them on oppositely charged metal plates. Ozone is a byproduct of this process that can in large enough quantities aggravate asthma, damage the lungs and irritate the respiratory system, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Sharper Image leads the ionizer market; ionizers, overall, make up about a quarter of the $410 million-a-year air cleaner market, according to a CR report on air cleaners released in May.

High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter cleaners -- which trap most particles and remove odors while producing much lower amounts of ozone -- make up another category of air purifiers. Use of a third type, called ozone generators, is discouraged by many experts because of the emission of high amounts of ozone.

Sharper Image took issue with the testing methods used by CR.

CR based its findings on the Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) system, the industry standard for evaluating air cleaners. CADR measures the rate at which contaminants are removed from the air, according to Richard Shaughnessy, an American Lung Association adviser and program director of indoor air research at the University of Tulsa.

"We consider any air cleaner with a clean air delivery rate (CADR) of under 100 to be ineffective," CR reported in its update. "CADR values for the Ionic Breeze were consistently in the 20s for dust and smoke and in the 30s for pollen. . . . Our highest-rated air cleaner removed particles from the air roughly 20 times faster than the Ionic Breeze."

Doesn't get any clearer than that...