Vietnamese housewives want to buy ozone generators as adverts say they disinfect food and fruit. However, scientists have said the machine does not have such a feature; it cannot kill 99.9 percent of bacteria, toxins, and pesticides on food and fruit as advertised. 

The information has shocked millions of Vietnamese who have bought the machines.

In fact, the uselessness of ozone generators was first warned about three years ago. Nguyen Hong Anh, deputy head of the Hanoi Plant Protection Sub-department in 2013, stirred up the public with the statement that households were wasting money on ozone generators.

Anh, when speaking to VTC News, said the machine can only have effects on the surface of vegetables and fruits, i.e. it can help clean visible stains and some microorganisms on the surface. Meanwhile, it will not help disinfect food as people think.

However, people took this with a grain of salt. They could not imagine that a machine, which won a prize from the Vietnam Fund for Supporting Technological Creations (VIFOTEC), a national fund with the participation of the nation’s leading experts, could be ‘useless’.

However, more and more scientists have recently shown their agreement with Anh. 

Nguyen Van Nho from the Hanoi University of Natural Sciences, a member of the Hanoi National University, also said that ozone only has an impact on the surface of food. 

Many renowned scientists have dismissed the possibility of Vietnam-made household-used ozone generators neutralizing chemicals on food and fruit, warning that low-quality machines will be harmful to human health.

“When using the machine, people may see small bubbles arising from meat and they think these are from the dirt in meat. But they are wrong. Heavy metals contained in food won’t emerge and go out of the food as they think,” he said. 

Nguyen Dang Luong, an ozone expert from the Physics Institute HCMC Branch, affirmed that if fish and pigs were bred with weight-gaining drugs with toxic substances, they will contain toxins in every cell, and they cannot be removed by an ozone generator, or any machine. The only measure for consumers to protect themselves is to keep away from unsafe food.

Duong Minh Tri from the HCMC Physics Institute said there was no official document saying that cleaning food with household-used ozone generators can reduce pesticide residue and parasites.

Scientists have also warned that ozone generators may do more harm than good. The World Health Organization (WHO) sets the safety line for ozone at 0,06ppm for 8h (1994). However, some reports pointed out that even with 0.06 ppm concentration, many people would have respiratory problems.