As students return to school, parents are getting a lot of mail about what schools are doing to better protect kids in the classroom — including details on mask policies and how kids will sit at lunch. One item on many administrators’ lists of protective measures is improving ventilation in the classroom.

Many studies have shown that better ventilation and air circulation can greatly reduce covid-19 transmission. But rather than stocking up on HEPA filters, some school districts are turning to high-tech air purification strategies, including the use of untested electronic methods and airborne chemicals.

KHN has written extensively about school air filtration. Senior correspondent Christina Jewett joins Ira Flatow to explain why some air-quality experts are less than convinced by the marketing claims made by many electronic air purifier companies.

Don’t miss the simple snail-mail hack Jewett shares to gauge whether the device your school is using might be of concern.

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He sent cards in the mail advertising air purifiers using ActivePure technology to new homeowners: “KILL COVID-19, CORONAVIRUS IN YOUR HOME!!”

One card landed on the desk of a postal inspector, who called it false and misleading in a court record. Shumaker then told an undercover agent on the phone on April 24, 2020, that the air purifier “kills the Coronavirus Virus on the spot,” according to a .

Weeks later, as Shumaker was heading out the door to his daughter’s tennis tournament, eight law enforcement officers detained him. In August, he to distributing “a pesticide device that was misbranded in that the product label was missing an EPA establishment number.” In other words, he failed to follow the letter of a little-known law.

Shumaker told KHN he was just a salesperson and the devices were being shipped straight from the manufacturer. “So I don’t know — what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “How do I know if there’s a sticker on there or not? I don’t have a clue.”

The company that makes the devices, ActivePure Technologies, said Shumaker was not an authorized or known salesperson of its products.

The sting is a rare example of enforcement in an arena where money is gushing like a geyser but oversight is nearly nonexistent. Electronic air cleaners, heavily marketed to gyms, doctors’ offices and hospitals, companies and schools awash in federal covid relief funds, tend to use high-voltage charges to alter molecules in the air. The companies selling the devices say they can destroy pathogens and clean the air.

But academic air quality experts say the technology can be ineffective or potentially create harmful byproducts. Companies that make the devices are subject to virtually no standardized testing or evaluation of their marketing claims. A KHN investigation this spring found that over 2,000 schools across the country have bought such technology.

“That’s one of the reasons these companies thrive, is that there’s nobody, nobody checking every aspect of what they do,” said , a Colorado State University associate professor who specializes in atmospheric and indoor chemistry.

Regulatory Patchwork

An alphabet soup of federal agencies have truth-in-advertising or product medical device oversight powers but have done little about air cleaners or left broad loopholes. That has left a handful of states to take the most decisive action on the industry.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not regulate the devices but, like academic air quality experts, time-tested portable HEPA filters to clean the air in rooms. In comparison, ionizing and dry hydrogen peroxide air purifiers have a “less-documented track record” in air cleaning, the CDC says.

The CDC also urges consumers to research the technology and “request testing data.” Those reports, though, can be difficult to parse. They include arcane terms like “natural decay” and test conditions that only an expert could spot as different from those that prevail in real life.

The Food and Drug Administration regulates medical devices. But only air purifiers for a direct medical use or that make a medical claim, like relieving allergies, qualify. The FDA doesn’t consider ads saying a device can kill a microorganism a “medical claim,” spokesperson Shirley Simson said in an email.

Instead, the air purifiers fall under the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority as marketed to destroy “pests,” which include bacteria or viruses. But “unlike chemical pesticides, the EPA does not register devices and, therefore, does not routinely review their safety or efficacy,” said.

Trying to fill the gaps, California bans the sale of air purifiers than a certain level of the toxic ozone gas. The New York State Education Department is “” that schools buy air purifiers it describes as “ion generators” or “corona discharge technology.”

, a University of Toronto civil engineering professor who studies indoor air quality, said more meaningful national regulation might clarify for consumers how the devices would work in an actual room.

“If you get any serious government oversight, a big chunk of this industry will go away,” said Siegel.

‘I Was Alone’

While “pesticide” might evoke the idea of a roach killer, the EPA applies the term more broadly: A pesticide is any substance that claims to kill or mitigate pests. Technologies that claim to do the same through physical means — including air purifiers that inactivate bacteria and viruses — are considered .

And while the agency requires proof that pesticides in its premarket review, it has no such requirement for so-called pesticide devices — such as electronic air cleaners that deploy ions or “reactive oxygen” to purify the air.

Instead, manufacturers need to obtain what’s known as an indicating where the device is made, and then they and their sellers must label their products with it. That’s the step Shumaker pleaded guilty to skipping.

“There is no review associated with that,” said , a lawyer who specializes in chemical regulation law at Keller and Heckman in Washington, D.C. “That is automatic. It’s like trying to get license plates for your car.”

So Shumaker told KHN he was baffled as to why he was targeted instead of the corporate level, which in this case would be the company, Aerus, which Technologies. Dr. Deborah Birx, former adviser to President Donald Trump, joined ActivePure in March as chief medical and science adviser.

“I was alone,” Shumaker said in an interview about facing charges. “Nobody backed me up.”

Joe Urso, CEO of ActivePure Technologies, told KHN that its studies showing its devices inactivate the virus that causes covid were not completed until the fall, long after the postcards were sent. Urso said in a statement that his company’s devices do have establishment numbers, and that he supports the ruling against Shumaker.

Federal Trade Commission officials have written warning letters companies during the pandemic. The commission requires claims about a product’s safety and efficacy to be supported with “competent and reliable scientific evidence.”

One of the last high-profile actions the FTC took against an air purifier company was in 1997, when the Justice Department on its behalf against Alpine Industries, which made ozone-generating air purifiers. In 2001, a judge fined Alpine $1.49 million for failing to stop making unsubstantiated claims about its devices, which it had said relieved allergies and removed indoor pollutants.

Alpine is a related company to , according to the FTC. And a majority of EcoQuest International assets were bought in 2009 , according to its 2021 press kit. ActivePure makes the device Shumaker got into trouble for selling.

Siegel, of the University of Toronto, consulted with U.S. government agencies targeting the misleading marketing claims of some air-cleaner companies about 10 years ago. He finds the company-by-company approach to be a game of “whack-a-mole.”

“A company goes away because they have regulatory scrutiny and reinvent themselves a few months later,” he said. “The only solution I see to this problem is a government agency really takes ownership of this — the information dissemination to consumers and the claims by manufacturers. I see no other path forward.”

‘It’s Just Buyer Beware’

The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which regulates pesticide devices, was written decades ago and applied to things such as flypaper, long before anyone anticipated machines that would blast ions to clean the air.

“We’re just pushing EPA to try and get updated,” said Patrick Jones, president of the . “It’s just buyer beware.”

Even before the covid pandemic, Jones’ group was ringing the alarm over the increasing public health claims around pesticide devices. The pesticide control association wrote in a 2019 to the EPA of its concern about the growing use in health care facilities of “non-government evaluated pesticide devices that make unsubstantiated human health claims … with no scientific data being submitted to EPA to prove their effectiveness.”

EPA spokesperson Tim Carroll said in an email that the agency is developing more outreach materials for schools on air purifiers.

But as few independent authorities assess the effectiveness of the devices, school officials have been snapping them up.

Last summer, the private St. Thomas More School in Kansas City, Missouri, bought ionizing air purifiers to fight covid. Scott Dulle, the director of building and grounds, said he went with technology he saw health leaders buying.

“We followed the doctors and the hospitals and the government,” he said. “They would not put their patients and staff in harm’s way.”

AAPCO’s Jones said changes to federal oversight are needed to better deal with the flood of devices. His solution: If a pesticide device makes a public health claim, it should be evaluated with the same rigor used for pesticides like ant spray.

But to alter the law fundamentally would take congressional action, EPA’s Carroll said.

The EPA pesticide device companies and sellers if a product makes misleading or false claims — and fines can reach into the millions, according to Brandon Neuschafer, a lawyer who specializes in agricultural regulations at the St. Louis-based firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. He noted companies are often turned in by their competitors.

Last fiscal year, Carroll said, the agency issued 19 import refusal notices and sent six advisory letters for covid-related air-purifying products — a small fraction of its 2020 pesticide actions. Carroll said such investigations are ongoing and a high priority.

But EPA’s resources were not the same as they were many years ago, Neuschafer said, as the agency is working with smaller staffing and budgets.

‘Worse Indoor Air Quality’

Almost a decade before covid emerged, New York’s education department asked state health officials an AtmosAir bipolar ionization unit to see if it would improve the air quality.

During a test in an empty classroom, they found that levels of harmful ozone gas and “ultrafine particles” that can cause were elevated, indicating “worse indoor air quality when the AtmosAir Bipolar ionization unit is operating,” the 2013 state Bureau of Toxic Substance Assessment .

New York State Department of Health officials released the study in response to a KHN public records request about the education department’s covid-era guidance, which urges schools .

AtmosAir spokesperson Sarah Berman said the device studied in 2013 is discontinued and “all current products have no affiliation to” it. She also said in an email that tests by third-party labs found that “our bipolar ionization products do not contribute to unacceptable levels” of volatile organic compounds, which are potentially harmful substances.

The California Department of Public Health advised in September “air cleaning devices that generate harmful pollutants (i.e., ionization devices or ozone generators)” on the third page of a single-spaced, 44-page document. That guidance was widely overlooked. Districts from to to bought ionization systems.

But the state does have a one-of-a-kind law: It bans air purifiers that emit anything above a certain level of ozone.

New Jersey doesn’t have the same kind of regulation: that a public school district there bought of ozone-emitting Odorox devices on the California Air Resources Board’s list of “” air purifiers. Since then, the New Jersey health department warning schools about the air purifiers “that may harm health,” listing the specific hazards of ozone to children’s health.

Back in Georgia, Shumaker more than $9,000 and is on two years’ probation.

And the postcards that got him into trouble? Those led to only a handful of sales.

“So it was just like setting money on fire,” he said.

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When Dulle found air-purifying ionization technology that said would inactivate over 99% of the virus that causes covid-19 in minutes, he had to have it. Parishioners who support the parochial school, some of whom were out of work, raised roughly $22,000 to buy the devices. 

Once the units were added to the school’s air system last summer, Dulle was confident he had made the right decision.

“I knew in my heart, I knew on paper, that we were probably one of the most protected schools in Kansas City,” Dulle said.

More than 100 public and private schools in Missouri are installing air-cleaning technology to try to ease the covid fears of staff members and parents, KHN and St. Louis Public Radio found through a review of school board notes, school websites and news reports. From Dulle’s Kansas City school to the Clayton district west of St. Louis to the Jefferson City School District in central Missouri, the review found schools across the state are collectively spending over $3.5 million on devices that claim to reduce the covid virus.

But in April, a covid-19 commission task force for top medical journal The Lancet, composed of international health, education and air quality experts, called various air-cleaning technologies — ionization, plasma and dry hydrogen peroxide — “” with a potential to create “harmful secondary pollutants.”

School officials need to be cautious when considering installing the devices, said , an assistant professor in environmental engineering who studies aerosols and air quality at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. He and other air quality experts worry that some versions of the cleaners may emit byproducts such as ozone that can make people sick.

“It’s some schools influencing other schools, and they’ve heard about this thing, and they think this is quite fancy, and maybe they will make the children’s parents feel safer,” he said. “We shouldn’t easily just devote all of our resources onto this device before we know clearly what’s happening.”

At a federal regulatory level, air-purifying devices that use ionization or UV light count as devices that kill pests such as bacteria and viruses, but they do not face the same scrutiny as more traditional pesticides, said Patrick Jones, president of the and four lawyers who specialize in pesticide law.

Pratim Biswas, who spent years leading the Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering Department at Washington University in St. Louis, said not enough peer-reviewed evidence shows the devices are effective at preventing covid spread — or better than using a multilayered approach that includes low-cost solutions such as opening a window. He added that much of the testing conducted so far has occurred in laboratories, not in a classroom environment.

“People try to sell some of these devices, but there’s no shortcut,” said Biswas, now the University of Miami’s incoming dean of engineering.

Instead, Biswas, Wang and others typically recommend schools install high-quality air filters such as HEPA or more advanced MERV 13 filters, and increase the amount of outdoor air inside a room.

Even so, over 2,000 schools across 44 states have installed ion-blasting or other air-purifying technology, a KHN investigation found in May. To pay the bill, many schools have tapped into a flood of taxpayer money — roughly $193 billion in federal funds sent to schools to pay for anything from salaries to personal protective equipment.

In Kansas City, St. Thomas More School received about $11,000 in taxpayer funds to reimburse the school for half the cost of the devices it installed, Dulle said. St. Louis University High School, a private Catholic school, also used to pay for ionization technology, according to and its . St. Louis University High School did not respond to multiple attempts for comment.

In the St. Louis suburbs, Rockwood School District is spending more than $685,000 to install ionizing units across its campus. “The federal funding that has been made available absolutely was a game changer,” said Chris Freund, Rockwood’s director of facilities. “That’s really what kind of tipped the scales.”

For some larger districts, the costs add up. The public Jefferson City School District has budgeted $1.1 million, not from federal pandemic funding, to install ionization units in its schools, according to district spokesperson Ryan Burns. That could buy more than 3,600 Samsung Chromebook laptops for students.

The “iWave” devices that Kansas City’s Dulle purchased rely on technology from Global Plasma Solutions. The air-purifying company’s for its various products explain how they are designed to work: They emit charged ions into the air. Those ions “seek out” particles, like dust or pollen, and make them cluster together. Those clusters are more easily trapped inside a filter in a building’s HVAC system. The North Carolina-based company also says on its website that the .

The company, which has made products also being installed in Jefferson City Public Schools, St. Louis University High School and other schools in Missouri, is facing a federal lawsuit filed by a consumer who bought one of its devices, alleging the company “continues to defraud consumers by concealing material information regarding the true performance” of its products.

Company spokesperson Kevin Boyle pointed to the company’s motion to dismiss the suit. In those , Global Plasma Solutions said of the lawsuit: “It is devoid of any concrete, specific allegations plausibly alleging that GPS made even a single false or deceptive statement about its products.”

Boyle said peer-reviewed research on the company’s products doesn’t exist yet for the virus that causes covid-19, but his confidence in the technology stems from the company’s testing, stories from customers and the general peer-reviewed research on the benefits of ionization.

“This technology is safe and effective,” he said, noting he was glad it was in his children’s schools. “This is not a silver bullet. This is part of a multilayered solution. And when this technology is used, it absolutely delivers incremental benefits.”

He said the ionizers from Global Plasma Solutions do not emit “harmful volumes of ozone.”

One school district in California turned off its devices when it learned of the lawsuit. Although Dulle’s Kansas City school is aware of the Global Plasma Solutions lawsuit, he said, school officials decided “we’re going to wait and see where this is going.” He said that doctors’ offices and other trusted institutions had bought the technology. And when the school bought the devices last summer, he said, school officials were “every day learning something new about the virus and how to kill it.”

In north St. Louis County, Pattonville School District has installed Global Plasma Solutions technology made possible by federal relief funds, .

Ron Orr, chief financial officer for the district, noted the appeal of buying devices that fight more than the virus that causes covid-19, as makers of air-purifying devices often tout their ability to curb the spread of viruses that cause colds, flu and other illnesses. He is such a fan, he bought a unit to help with dirt and dander in his home — where he lives with his wife, son and three dogs.

Orr isn’t completely sold on the claims of the devices when it comes to keeping kids safe from covid: “What I will say, it makes our environment safer and healthier, because we’re filtering out more from the air than we otherwise would be.”

He said the price also was hard to beat compared with replacing the district’s entire HVAC systems with a higher filtration option.

“Is there any way that we can get to that standard, without having to replace $40 million in heating and cooling equipment, which just physically wasn’t something that was going to be possible?” Orr asked. “And so that’s what kind of led us down this road.”

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Boeing noted 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.

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 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 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 — “.”

Boeing said in 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 , 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.”

‘No Reduction’ in Bacteria

GPS pointed to another study, one conducted in the weeks before Boeing began its study in September, by a third-party lab. It completed of — 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 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%.

“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 of GPS devices and another kind of ionization technology.

The Boeing study cites a GPS that says its device killed 99.68% of E. coli bacteria in one test in 15 minutes. GPS records show the test was done on bacteria suspended . 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 “” webpage, a GPS spokesperson confirmed.

Boeing researchers found another lab result they could not replicate: While the GPS white paper a 96.24% 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 . 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 to and 30,000 ions per cubic centimeter when an HVAC system is running, according to records and statements made by .

In during a Berkeley Unified School District meeting in California, a physicist 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% 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 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.”

Ripple Effects of the Boeing Study

On May 7, law firms representing a man who spent over $750 on a GPS air cleaner in Texas filed the “fraudulent concealment” 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 from Superintendent Mark Triplett to district families. The district spent nearly $360,000 on the devices, an April shows.

The roughly 5,500-student district bought GPS units for every school HVAC system, Triplett said in a March school in which he noted the technology “arguably is much better than any filter.” By May, 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.

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Last summer, Global Plasma Solutions wanted to test whether the company’s air-purifying devices could kill covid-19 virus particles but could find only a lab using a chamber the size of a shoebox for its trials. In the , the virus was blasted with 27,000 ions per cubic centimeter.

In September, the company’s founder that the devices being offered for sale actually deliver a lot less ion power — 13 times less — into a full-sized room.

The company nonetheless used — over 99% viral reduction — in marketing its device heavily to schools as something that could combat covid in classrooms far, far larger than a shoebox.

School officials desperate to calm worried parents bought these devices and others with a flood of federal funds, installing them in more than 2,000 schools across 44 states, a KHN investigation found. They use the same technology — ionization, plasma and dry hydrogen peroxide — that Commission recently deemed “often unproven” and potential sources of pollution themselves.

In the frenzy, schools are buying technology that academic air-quality experts warn can lull them into a false sense of security or even potentially harm kids. And schools often overlook the fact that their trusted contractors — typically engineering, HVAC or consulting firms — stand to earn big money from the deals, KHN found.

Academic experts are encouraging schools to pump in more fresh air and use tried-and-true filters, like HEPA, to capture the virus. Yet every ion- or hydroxyl-blasting air purifier sale strengthens a firm’s next pitch: The device is doing a great job in the neighboring town.

“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people buy these technologies, the more they get legitimacy,” said, a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s really the complete wild west out there.”

Marwa Zaatari, a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE) Epidemic Task Force, first compiled a list of schools and districts using such devices.

Schools have been “bombarded with persistent salespersons peddling the latest air and cleaning technologies, including those with minimal evidence to-date supporting safety and efficacy” according to Thursday by the Center for Green Schools and ASHRAE.

Zaatari said she was particularly concerned that officials in New Jersey thousands of devices made by another company that emit ozone, which can exacerbate asthma and harm developing lungs, according to decades of research.

“We’re going to live in a world where the air quality in schools is worse after the pandemic, after all of this money,” Zaatari said. “It’s really sickening.”

The sales race is fueled by roughly $193 billion in federal funds allocated to schools for teacher pay and safety upgrades — a giant fund that can be used to buy air cleaners. And Democrats are pushing for $100 billion more that could also be spent on air cleaners.

In April, Global Plasma Solutions said further tests show its covid in the air and on surfaces in larger chambers. The company studies still use about of ions than its leaders the devices can deliver, KHN found.

There is virtually no federal oversight or enforcement of safe air-cleaning technology. Only California bans air cleaners that emit a certain amount of ozone.

U.S. Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chair of the education and labor committee, said the federal government typically is not involved in local decisions of what products to buy, although he hopes for more federal guidance.

In the meantime, “these school systems are dealing with contractors providing all kinds of services,” he said, “so you just have to trust them to get the best expert advice on what to do.”

These go-between contractors — and the air cleaner companies themselves — have a stake in the sales. While their names might appear in school board records, their role in selling the device or commission from the deal is seldom made public, KHN found.

A LinkedIn with the logo for one air purifier company, ActivePure Technology, which employs former Trump adviser Dr. Deborah Birx as its chief medical and science adviser, recruited salespeople this way: “Make Tons of Money with this COVID-killing Technology!!” The commission, the post said, is up to $900 per device.

“We have reps [who] made over 6-figures in 1 month selling to 1 school district,” the ad says. “This could be the biggest opportunity you have seen!”

‘A Tiny Bit of Ozone’

Schools in New Jersey have a particularly easy time buying air cleaners called Odorox: A state education agency lists them on their , with a large unit selling for more than $5,100. Originally used in home restoration and mold remediation, the devices have become popular in New Jersey schools as the company says its products can .

In Newark, administrators welcomed students back to class last month with more than 3,200 Odorox units, purchased with $7.5 million in federal funds, said Steven Morlino, executive director of Facilities Management for Newark Public Schools.

“I think parents feel pretty comfortable that their children are going to a safe environment,” he said. “And so did the staff.”

Environmental health and air-quality experts, though, are alarmed by the district’s plan.

The Pyure company’s Odorox devices are on California air-quality “potentially hazardous ozone generators sold as air purifiers” and cannot be sold in the state.

A company distributor’s research shows that its Boss XL3 device pumps out parts per billion of ozone, a level that exceeds limits set by California lawmakers for the and the EPA standard for ground-level ozone — a limit set to protect children from the well-documented to developing lungs.

That level exceeds the industry’s self-imposed limit by more than 10 times and is “unacceptable,” according to William Bahnfleth, an architectural engineering professor at Penn State who studies indoor air quality and leads the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force.

Jean-Francois “JF” Huc, CEO of the Pyure company, pointed out that the study was done in a space smaller than they for such a powerful Odorox device. He cautioned that it was done that way to prove that home-restoration workers could be in the room with the device without violating work-safety rules.

“We provide very stringent operating guidelines around the size of room that our different devices should be put in,” he said.

You can’t see or smell ozone, but lungs treat it like a “foreign invader,” said Michael Jerrett, who has studied its health effects as director of the UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.

Lung cells mount an immune-like response, which can trigger asthma complications and divert energy from normal lung function, he said. Chronic exposure has been linked to more emergency room visits and can even cause premature death. Once harmed, Jerrett said, children’s lungs may not regain full function.

“Ozone is a very serious public health problem,” Jerrett said.

Newark has some of rates in the state, affecting 1 in 4 kids. Scholars have linked outdoor ozone levels in Newark to ER visits and is the leading cause of school absenteeism there.

Adding ozone into the classroom is “just nightmarish,” Siegel, of the University of Toronto, said.

Morlino said the district plans to monitor ozone levels in each classroom, based on the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration level for working adults, which is 100 parts per billion.

“In our research of the product,” he said, “we’ve determined it’s within the guidelines the federal government produces.”

While legal for healthy working adults, the work-safety standard should not apply to developing children, said Michael Kleinman, an air-quality researcher at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. “It’s not a good device to be using in the presence of children,” he said.

But the devices are going into schools throughout the state that will not be monitoring ozone levels, acknowledged Dave Matisoff, owner of Bio-Shine, a New Jersey-based distributor of Odorox. He said the main safeguard is informing schools about the appropriate-size should be deployed to, a factor in ozone concentration.

Huc, the CEO, said his team has measured levels of ozone that are higher outdoors in Newark than inside — with his company’s units running.

“There is a tiny bit of ozone that is introduced, but it’s very, very low,” he said. “And you get the benefit of the antimicrobial effect, you get the benefit of reduction of pathogens, which we’ve demonstrated in a number of studies, and you get the reduction of VOC [volatile organic compounds].”

Meanwhile, despite expert concerns, the devices continue to pop up in classrooms and school nurses’ offices across the state, said Allen Barkkume, an industrial hygienist for the New Jersey teachers union.

He doesn’t blame schools for buying them, as they’re a lot less expensive than overhauling ventilation systems. Teachers often push for the devices in their classrooms, he said, as they see them in the nurses’ offices and think it’ll keep them safe. And superintendents are not well-versed in air quality’s complex scientific concepts.

“Nothing sounds better than something that’s cheap, quiet, small and easy to find, and we can stick them in every classroom,” Barkkume said.

Tested in Shoebox, Sold for Classrooms

While New York officials are “” the installation of ionization devices due to “potential negative health effects,” schools across the state of New Jersey are installing ionizing devices.

Ten miles away from Newark in Montclair, New Jersey, parents have been over the new Global Plasma Solutions’ ionizing devices in their children’s classrooms. The company website that emits ions like those “created with energy from rushing water, crashing waves and even sunlight.”

The devices emit positive and negative ions that are meant to help particles clump together, making them easier to filter out. The company says the ions can the viral particles that cause covid-19.

But Justin Klabin, a building developer with a background in indoor air quality and two sons in the district, was not convinced.

He spent hours compiling scientific evidence. He created painstaking picking apart the ionizers’ viability and helped organize a petition signed by dozens of parents warning the school board against the installation.

Even so, the district spent $635,900 on installing ionizers, which would go in classrooms serving . The devices are often installed in ducts, an important consideration, the company Charles Waddell , because the ions that are emitted lose their power after 60 seconds.

But the company’s shoebox study and inflated ion blast numbers that helped sell the product last year leave a potential customer with little sense of how the device would perform in a classroom, Zaatari said.

“It’s a high cost for nothing,” Zaatari said. The company has sued her and another air-quality consultant for criticizing their devices. Of the pending case, Zaatari said it is a David-versus-Goliath situation, but she will not be deterred from speaking on behalf of children.

“Size of the [test] chamber has proved not to play a role in efficacy results but rather ion density,” GPS spokesperson Kevin Boyle said in an email. The company notes by its covid-inactivating that they “may include … higher-than-average ion concentrations.”

He also said the company is proud to meet the ASHRAE “zero ozone” certification.

Glenn Morrison, a professor of environmental science and engineering at the University of North Carolina, reviewed on a device combating the covid virus in the air. The device appears to reduce virus concentrations, he said in an email, but noted it would not be very effective under normal building conditions, outside a test chamber. “A cheap portable HEPA filter would work many times better and have fewer side effects (possibly ozone or other unwanted chemistry),” he wrote.

Other parents joined Klabin’s campaign, including Melanie Robbins, the mom of a kindergartner and a child in pre-K. Armed with her background in nonprofit advocacy, she reached out to experts. She and other parents spoke at local government meetings about their concerns.

In April, the superintendent told parents the school would turn off the devices, but parents say they haven’t turned them all off.

“As far as I understand, the district has relied only on information from GPS, the manufacturer,” Robbins said during a Montclair Board of Education . “This is like only listening to advice from Philip Morris as to whether smoking is safe or not.”

Dan Daniello, of D&B Building Solutions, an HVAC contracting company, defended GPS products during the meeting. He said they are even in the White House, a selling point the company has .

The catch: A GPS contractor installed its ionization technology in the East Wing of the White House after it was purchased in 2018 — before covid emerged, according to GPS’ Boyle. But the company was still using the White House logo as a marketing image on its website when KHN asked the White House about the advertising in April. It was taken down shortly thereafter.

Boyle said GPS was “recently informed that the White House logo may not be used for marketing purposes, and promptly complied.”

The Montclair school district did not respond to requests for comment.

“I want to bang my head against the wall, it’s so black-and-white,” Robbins said. “Admit this is a poor purchase, the district got played.”

Selling ‘the Big Kahuna’

Academic air-quality experts agree on what’s best for schools: More outside air pumped into classes, MERV 13 filters in heating systems and portable HEPA filters. The solution is time-tested and effective, they say. Yet as common commodities, like a pair of khaki pants, these items are not widely flogged by a sales force chasing big commissions.

After covid hit, Tony Barron said the companies pitched air purifying technology nonstop to the Kansas district where he worked as a facility manager last fall.

Pressure came from inside the school as well. Teachers sent links for air cleaners they saw on the news. His superintendent had him meet with a friend who sold ionization products. He got constant calls, mail and email from mechanical engineering companies.

The hundreds of phone calls from air cleaner pitches were overwhelming, said Chris Crockett, director of facilities for Turner USD 202 in Kansas City, Kansas. While he wanted to trust the contractors he had worked with, he tested four products before deciding to spend several hundred thousands of dollars.

“Custodial supply companies see the writing on the wall, that there’s a lot of money out there,” he said. “And then a lot of money is going to be spent on HVAC systems.”

ActivePure says on its website that its air purifiers are in . In , the company said they were “sold through a nationwide network of several hundred franchises, 5,000 general contractors/HVAC specialists and thousands of individual distributors.”

Enviro Technology Pros, founded in January, is one company pitching ActivePure to HVAC contractors. , the founders said contractors can make $950 for each air-cleaning device sold, and some dealers can make a month. Citing the bounty of the billions in federal relief, another video touted ready-made campaigns to target school principals directly.

After KHN asked ActivePure for comment, the Enviro Technology Pros YouTube videos about ActivePure were no longer accessible publicly.

ActivePure did not respond to requests for comment but has said its devices are effective and one is validated by the Food and Drug Administration.

An Enviro Technology Pros founder, Rod Norman, told KHN the company was asked to take the posts down by Vollara, a company related to ActivePure. He called sales to schools “the big kahuna.”

Shortly after he spoke with KHN, the website for his own company was taken down.

In an the company had asked: “4000 classrooms protected why not your kids?”

Shoshana Dubnow contributed to this report.

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As strategic health and safety adviser, he follows Dr. Deborah Birx, former White House coronavirus response coordinator, into the booming air purifying industry. Last month, she signed on with ActivePure, a company that also makes a pitch about virus-destroying technology, but markets some devices that run afoul of California indoor air quality rules, according to a KHN investigation.

The two bring name recognition to companies selling products that to for people to gather maskless inside schools, offices, gyms and stores. The companies market .

Academic indoor air quality experts who criticize certain claims about covid-killing technology say the industry-funded studies often focus on results of tests run in a space ranging in size from a shoebox to a cabinet that do not reflect the conditions in a large room. Studies backed by the industry rarely make it clear whether the touted “virus-killing” ions or molecules are doing the work, experts say, or if improvements come from a fan or filter on a device.

“There’s no other way to say it — it’s completely unproven whether these devices would work in a real-world setting,” Timothy Bertram said of devices that claim to attack molecules in midair. He is a chemistry professor who studies aerosol particles at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Redfield, who led the CDC during the Trump administration’s pandemic response, did not respond to requests for comment before publication. “Proper ventilation has a major role to play in mitigating transmission of COVID-19 and other respiratory pathogens,” Redfield said in a Big Ass Fans . “Big Ass Fans is a leader in designing airflow systems and making places where we live, work, and play, safer.”

Academic air quality experts, though, say high-profile physician sign-ons amount to celebrity endorsements.

“I’d much rather see good data transparently released than listen to Deborah Birx talk about how good this technology is when I know she isn’t an expert on air disinfection,” said William Bahnfleth, an architectural engineering professor at Penn State who studies indoor air quality and leads the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Epidemic Task Force.

Bertram said he studied the performance of various ion- and hydroxyl-releasing devices in classrooms and found that some emitted ozone, a gas associated with the onset or worsening of asthma. Others created other new small particles. When it came to improving ventilation, none performed as well as a HEPA filter, he said, which together with a MERV-13 filter in a heating system and increased outside ventilation is the standard recommendation. Bertram did not say which specific devices he reviewed, but said that will be detailed in a forthcoming study.

Big Ass Fans is entering the coronavirus air purifying market with brand recognition based on its uncontroversial air-moving mega-fans. Its Clean Air System fans are already used in schools and by companies such as Toyota, Tiffany & Co. and Orangetheory Fitness.

Some Clean Air System fans light, widely considered an effective air cleaning technology. Other fans use bipolar ionization, a technique that the warns is “an emerging technology, and little research is available that evaluates it outside of lab conditions,” adding that evidence of its effectiveness is less documented than the evidence for far more established choices like air filtration.

Big Ass Fans spokesperson Alex Risen stressed in an interview that its technology is just one layer of protection against the coronavirus. The company, headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky, “pairs scientifically proven air purifying technologies with powerful airflow solutions. This results in a system that kills 99.99% of pathogens to keep your people protected and your business booming.”

The company charges about $500 to $1,500 more for fans with Clean Air System technology.

In the pandemic, federal funding to buy such devices for schools has exploded, with roughly $193 billion available so far. Congressional Democrats are pushing for $100 billion more. With community pressure to reopen classrooms, school officials have begun to invest heavily in air cleaning technology, though some experts worry risks are not being considered.

The EPA has warned about bipolar ionization’s ability to generate ozone and other potentially harmful byproducts indoors. A by top indoor air quality experts in the Building and Environment journal found that another company’s bipolar ionization technology created other byproducts, including , which can have developmental effects after long-term inhalation exposure.

Risen, the Big Ass Fans spokesperson, stressed that its ionization technology does not emit ozone or other byproducts and is not “putting bad things into your lungs.” He said the products do not emit hydrogen peroxide. ActivePure, the air cleaning company Birx has signed on with, makes air cleaners that emit gaseous hydrogen peroxide, which it claims can seek out and destroy viruses, mold and bacteria,

“We know that we’re not producing any negative products,” Risen said. “We know that at the concentrations that you’re at, you’re not getting negative effects.”

Joe Urso, ActivePure Technologies CEO, said the “FDA has cleared a number of devices that emit hydrogen peroxide into the ambient air at a safe level for people to breathe, including our ActivePure Medical Guardian.”

Bahnfleth said Big Ass Fans had made more of a good faith effort with its studies than others in the market. But he added that, without measuring potential gaseous byproducts, the research was not complete.

“They still do nothing to address potential adverse impacts of chemical byproduct exposure,” said Brent Stephens, an indoor air quality expert who reviewed Big Ass Fans Clean Air System’s reports and leads the civil, architectural and environmental engineering department at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Stephens added that the controlled testing spaces — without people or furniture or other products that would be in a classroom or office — did not reflect real-world circumstances. And he worried about the “really high” ion counts, saying he would not recommend them for occupied spaces.

Bahnfleth echoed Stephens’ concerns, pointing to a study that showed adverse health effects such as increased oxidative stress levels — which are linked to — for those exposed to a . Experts said more research is needed, as bipolar ionization, like that used by Big Ass Fans, produces both positive and negative ions.

Risen defended the safety of ions in an interview, noting they occur naturally.

It’s hard to tell if the fan moving the air or the bipolar ionization is having an impact on the virus in the studies provided by Big Ass Fans, said Delphine Farmer, a Colorado State University associate professor who specializes in atmospheric and indoor chemistry. Also, she said, without real-world testing, it’s unclear what sort of reaction this product could have when exposed to classroom fumes from paint, glue or markers.

“Anything that actually destroys a virus is potentially doing other chemistry as well,” she said.

Another Clean Air System study claimed of the virus that causes covid from the air.

“When they give you 99.999%, that’s a red flag to any scientist. We don’t know anything to that degree,” Bertram said. “That’s just nuts.”

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The company is one of many in a footrace to capture some of the $193 billion in federal funding to schools.

Birx is now of ActivePure Technology, a company that counts 50 million customers since its 1924 start as the Electrolux vacuum company and does nearly $500 million annually in sales. Its marketing includes photos of outer space, a nod to a 1990s breakthrough with technology to remove a gas from NASA spaceships. The company’s show that, in its effort to create the “healthiest indoor environments in North America,” it leveraged something less impressive: the disinfecting power of ozone — a molecule considered hazardous and the onset and worsening of asthma.

In an interview with KHN, CEO Joe Urso acknowledged that its air cleaners that emit ozone account for 5% of sales, even though its marketing repeatedly claims “no chemicals or ozone.”

Conflicts between the science and marketing claims of an air purification company are nothing new to academic air quality experts. They warn that the industry — which sells to dental offices, businesses and gyms — is laser-focused on school officials, who are desperate to convince parents and teachers their buildings are safe. Children can be particularly susceptible to the chemical exposure some of these devices potentially create, experts say.

“The concerns you have raised are legitimate” when it comes to other companies’ products, Birx said, noting that as a grandmother she shares concerns about health. But she added that she has full confidence in ActivePure after reviewing records for the Food and Drug Administration’s clearance of a company device.

Schools are getting an infusion of roughly $180 billion in federal money to spend on personal protective equipment, physical barriers, air-cleaning systems and other infrastructure improvements. Previously, they could have used $13 billion of CARES Act funding. Democrats are pushing for $100 billion more that could also be used for school improvements, including air cleaners.

Putting unregulated devices in classrooms is “a giant uncontrolled experiment,” said , a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto and a member of its Building Engineering Research Group.

Researchers and the say the broader industry advertises products that alter molecules in the air to kill germs, without noting that the reactions can form other harmful substances, such as the carcinogen formaldehyde.

Marwa Zaatari, an indoor air quality consultant and a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ epidemic task force, said she has counted more than 125 schools or districts that have already bought air cleaner models the to “potentially harmful byproducts” such as ozone or formaldehyde. She estimated at least $60 million was spent.

Instead, air quality experts say, the best solutions come down : adding more outdoor air, buying portable HEPA filters and installing MERV 13 filters within heating systems. But school boards are often lured by aggressive claims of 99.9% efficiency — based on a test of a filter inside a small cabinet and not a classroom. “Every dollar you use for this equipment is a dollar you remove from doing the right solution,” Zaatari said.

Urso, of ActivePure Technology, said “other companies that I think are making wrongful claims” have brought scrutiny to the industry. But he said his firm’s technology has steadily improved and now emits “gaseous hydrogen peroxide” and other molecules that seek out and destroy viruses, mold and bacteria. He described the technology as active — in contrast to the more passive technology of air filters. A company website it makes the “safest, fastest and most powerful surface and air-purification technology available.”

Urso added, “I have a great technology that is truthful and it does what I say it does.”

The against technologies that release hydrogen peroxide that are “being heavily marketed.” The agency says the technology is “emerging” and “consumers are encouraged to exercise caution.”

During a Zoom interview, Birx deferred to ActivePure Medical’s president, Daniel Marsh, and Urso on the science. She focused instead on the need for products that will increase people’s confidence about going maskless indoors.

“Imagine decreasing the number of sick days of your workforce because your air is less contaminated,” Birx said. “There are uses of this technology that transcend the current pandemic.”

Birx was a controversial figure on Trump’s covid response team. She was criticized for standing by quietly as Trump suggested that people could ingest disinfectant to rid themselves of the virus. She has recently spoken out about her discomfort with such statements — while ActivePure Technology.

Birx said she was attracted to ActivePure because of its commitment to “hard science” in getting its Medical Guardian cleared by the FDA. The process required the company to prove the device was substantially equivalent to an existing device. Records the company submitted to the FDA describe the Medical Guardian as an “ion generator” and “photocatalytic oxidizer” that showed “a high efficacy against … a broad range of viable bioaerosol.”

Birx said she uses a hospital-grade HEPA filter in her home but noted that’s only because she wasn’t aware of the ActivePure technology when she bought it.

When ActivePure Technology, formerly known as Aerus, tells its story, it’s one of seamless progress. Yet its 2009 purchase of the air cleaner company EcoQuest saddled the company with two problematic technologies: one that intentionally to clean the air and another that did so , studies from the subsidiary company show.

The ActivePure companies and subsidiaries made the best of it, though, the technology’s purification powers on the basis of a Kansas State University of how well the devices disinfected the surface of meat compared with chlorine, which is widely used by meatpackers to kill bacteria.

Meanwhile, California lawmakers were outlawing consumer use of air cleaners that emit more than 50 parts per billion of ozone. They got momentum to regulate the industry with a survey that showed that a small percentage of state residents who used such devices at home had children — considered particularly sensitive to ozone. According to the California , ozone can “permanently damage lung tissue and reduce a person’s breathing ability.”

The CDC also reviewed the ActivePure technology in 2009. At the time, Birx, who served in the agency under three presidents, was directing its global AIDS response.

Agency scientists were evaluating the potential of air cleaners to help clear formaldehyde from Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers deployed after Hurricane Katrina. They knew the devices could potentially swap one hazard — ozone formed by some air cleaners — for the one they were trying to eliminate. So they tested and a device from ActiveTek — an Aerus subsidiary — with ActivePure technology emitted 116 parts per billion of ozone. The scientists deemed that level too high for cleaning the trailers.

Birx said the older ozone-emitting devices were first-generation devices. The newer ActivePure devices are third-generation and one is now validated by FDA clearance. That is not the same as FDA approval, which requires proof the device is safe and effective.

Urso said the company’s devices that emit ozone are mostly for commercial use. Although marketing for ActivePure says “no chemicals or ozone,” Urso acknowledged that it still sells a Pure & Clean Plus device that emits ozone and cannot be sold in California.

“It is very confusing,” Urso said, “and it’s confusing because we also match it with [the] ActivePure” logo. The company did not answer questions about five other devices on its website, which says they can’t be sold in California.

While current ActivePure marketing also says the technology produces no byproducts, Urso said that reflects results from lab studies, not studies from the environment where they might be used. That includes hundreds of schools that have trusted their technology, the says. There, experts say, chemicals that could react with air cleaner technology include car exhaust, spray cleaners, paint and glue.

The company markets to preschools as well. Brent Stephens, an indoor air quality expert who leads the civil, architectural and environmental engineering department at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was asked by the director of his own children’s preschool about the Aerus Hydroxyl Blaster.

Aerus had sent the director a sample to test in her home. But Stephens advised against buying one for the preschool, saying that, while the claims of similar machines may sound good, the studies to back them up often were not.

“It’s wild out there,” he wrote in an email. “Consumers need to know how these things perform and if they are subject to unforeseen consequences like generating byproducts from use.”

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