Good Housekeeping Report

The Good Housekeeping Institute ordered eleven improbable, but promising, catalog items and evaluated them with respected doctors and a physical therapist. Some of the gadgets, we found, were helpful even if they didn't work miracles.

Personal Air Purifier

WHAT IT IS: It's an electronic device resembling a beeper that's worn around your neck.

THE CLAIMS: Using a revolutionary technology called Corona Discharge to eliminate airborne pollutants, allergens, and viruses, it ejects pure, clean air into your breathing space.

GHI REALITY CHECK: Their volunteers wear-tested this air purifier. Two who are normally sensitive to dust or cat dander believed the product reduced their allergic reactions. (The third, who doesn't suffer from allergies, didn't feel any better.) When Institute engineers enclosed the purifier in a small tank filled with cigarette smoke, the air quickly cleared.

BOTTOM LINE: GHI Institute Engineering Director John M. Sun says the air purifier may be worth considering if you 're allergic to smoke or haven't been able to visit a cat owning friend because you wheeze.

"If you can't breathe, nothing else matters"
(American Lung Association)

LABORATORY & MARKETING TEST REPORTS.

Note: Testing has been done by the following institutions:

• American Environmental Health Foundation,
  Dallas, Texas
• University at Buffalo,
  Department of Chemistry
• Prominent California University School of Microbiology,
  Los Angeles, California
• Fuji-TV Product Research Lab,
  Tokyo, Japan
• Columbia University,
  New York, New York;
• Electro Synthesis Corporation,
  New York
• Hachi Juu Inc.
  Tokyo, Japan;
• Marubeni International,
  Japan
• University of Southern California,
  Los Angeles;
• Biomedical Engineering Travel Medicine Center,
  Los Angeles.

Claims Substantiated are as follows:

1. Helps tobacco smoke, pollens and air-borne germs from being deposited in lungs, on eyes or in nose of wearer.
2. Kills over 90% of all tested germs both round and rod shaped.
3. Destroys many air-borne chemicals and odors.
4. Germs cannot develop resistance and become immune as with drug therapy.
5. Ozone and other oxidant gases emitted are well below human safety threshold and pose no risk to user.

Reference | Good Housekeeping | March 1999