Bad Ozone Day? Hah! You Mean Bad Science!

If you live in or near any big city today I am sure you’ve heard the expressio "It's a bad ozone day". It’s usually announced by a News Reporter along with the smog alert when the outdoor pollution levels reach an unhealthy level. It makes good press and everybody loves the idea that we know exactly what the problem is. We even have a cute saying for it....

... "Ozone - Good up High - Bad nearby"

Give me a break! Do you want me to let you in on a dirty little secret? There is no such thing as a "bad ozone day" and life, as we know it, could not survive without ozone nearby! This is just an example of Bad Science. They are trying to tell you that hydrogen plus nitrogen plus sulfur equals ozone. (H + N + S = 03) Not when I went to school it didn't! Picture this for a moment…. Have you ever gone outside after a thunderstorm and commented on how “Fresh” the air smells. Of course, we all have and I am sure that I don't have to tell you that the fresh smell is actually ozone. So if that is the case, we have a puzzle. Let me ask you this.... ..... Can you detect that fresh ozone smell when you are outside in the city on a smoggy day? I doubt it. Don’t get me wrong. I am not foolish enough to think that if you can’t smell it, it isn’t there. The ozone level is definitely higher than normal during a smog alert, so

why can’t we smell it?

Is that ozone we see poring out of the smoke stacks of a factory? your car?

Is this ozone in the air harmful to our lungs? is it "bad" ozone? The fact is, smog is composed of a lot of pollutants, most of which are far more deadly than any amount of ozone you might come in contact with outdoors. The ozone we find in smog did not form with the pollution. It was created by nature in an attempt to remove the pollutants from the air. The reason we can’t smell it is that the “toxic soup” we are breathing is so strong it overpowers the ozone. Nature can only do so much and I am afraid she is losing the battle. So why do they report on the ozone levels? Why not give us the real data so we can target the problem at hand rather than waste our time blaming nature’s solution? There are two reasons: 1. The smog you see is composed of so many different pollutants that it is difficult to measure accurately. The one constant is the Ozone. The more chemicals (of all kinds) dumped into the air, the more ozone is created by nature in an attempt to clean it up. By quoting an ozone level they have an idea of how bad the pollution is. Unfortunately, this kind of reporting gives everybody else the wrong idea of the problem; and that brings us to the second reason, 2. If they blame ozone (nature), the huge polluters are able to side step their responsibility and they never have to do anything about it. No one has to clean up the environment. On a bad day in the city you can actually taste the dirty air you are breathing. The dirty brown / gray color you see is not ozone but as long as the general public believes it is, we will not address the real problem at hand. So if Ozone is not part of the pollution, what is it? Ozone ( O3 ) is an unstable form of oxygen ( O2 ). This means that while oxygen has only 2 atoms, ozone has 3. Right away you should notice a difference between ozone and any pollutant you can name. Ozone is simply oxygen which has picked up an extra atom. This can happen when the sun's ultraviolet rays strike a pollutant (chemical or biological) in the atmosphere, or when there has been an electrical discharge such as during a lightning storm. As I have said before, ozone is very unstable and is "looking" for a way to get rid of this extra atom. When ozone collides with a pollutant in the air, the extra atom dislodges and the ozone returns to its familiar oxygen form. The transfer of the extra atom usually results in the destruction / oxidation of the pollutant thereby cleaning the air naturally. Now, where is the harm in that? By now you are probably thinking there is more to this ozone than you thought. You might even be thinking that ozone might come in pretty handy in the fight against air pollution. Maybe you are even considering trying it out in your home or office. One of the safest and most powerful cleansing agents known to man! Are you still conce ed about your safety? You've heard so much negative about it that you aren't really sure? Well I am here to tell you that ozone is almost the safest and most powerful cleansing agent Mother Nature has to offer. I said almost....