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Maybe My Weirdest Product Review Ever


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I just finished reviewing the Air Guard AG-800, which is a sanitizer for enclosed spaces (kinda relevant these days, right)? But here's what's weird about it: it's manufactured by a Taiwanese company that makes foggers, haze machines, bubble machines, etc. for the entertainment market. Someone got the bright idea that hey, if we can spread fog throughout a club, we can spread sanitizer throughout a restaurant...right?

 

I'll spare you the details, but I did a fair amount of research on the properties of Thymol, which is the main component in the anti-bacterial fog they use. Turns out it's quite benign (it's made from thyme oils), and has been approved by the EPA to be used in killing coronavirus. I also found out it's used in apiaries to keep bees from dying due to various bacteria.

 

So I gotta say this is a pretty creative product This sure wasn't a review of some cool new virtual instrument, but it was one of the more interesting reviews I've ever done...talk about going out of my comfort zone!

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Freaky!

 

I am not a lawyer and I do not play one on the interwebz. I did work in aerospace, all procedures and toxic chemicals processes were FAA approved with stringent PPE and ventilation requirements. Gave me the heebie-jeebies to the point that I managed to implement replacing our old printing system (55 gallons of lacquer thinner used every 6 months) with a UV cured ink jet printer. Much better.

 

EPA approval means used correctly, it should not cause harm to most people most of the time.

It is not certification of an assurance of safety from infection.

 

This product has great potential, a splendid idea! More needs to be done.

 

If I owned a restaurant I would want to use them but I would not say anything about it, ever, to anybody. Even if somebody caught CV_19 somewhere else how could you prove they did not catch it at your place?

Right now that is a gray area but any claims that this has made it safe to dine in your establishment are fraught with peril. The marketing benefits cannot be touted without potential liability.

 

You could not use it as an incentive or assurance to the public that your establishment is safe. More of a "silent benefit" to your employees.

The manufacturer will need more certifications for a viable marketing campaign in the US, not sure about other countries.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I"m always skeptical, especially since the fluid for this machine is $600/gallon. A quick look on Google show a lot of similar products at 1/10the the price.

 

Also, the manufacturer says you can"t be in the room with this fog and have to let it air out for 20 minutes before coming back in.

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I"m always skeptical, especially since the fluid for this machine is $600/gallon. A quick look on Google show a lot of similar products at 1/10the the price.

 

Yeah, it kind of set off alarms with me too, until I started digging into the history of the product and test results/certification procedures. There are indeed much cheaper alternatives for thymol-based disinfectants, like stuff from Seventh Generation, but they don't necessarily have the other anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and disinfecting agents. Also, apparently it takes some effort to make the stuff fog machine friendly so it can be dispersed easily. I presume the costs of testing and certification in multiple countries is probably not trivial either, and has to be factored into the price.

 

The company says that the 500 ml bottle is good for a hundred 30-second blasts, which is sufficient to do a car. So if I was an Uber driver, if used every day for disinfecting the car, a gallon would be a two-year supply...I'd probably consider that worth it, especially because of the time it would save compared to wiping everything down manually.

 

FWIW this line of products has been around for quite a while, so it wasn't a "jump on the COVID bandwagon and charge what the market will bear" kind of thing. However, it was very much a specialty product until they created a new fluid with thymol specifically to address COVID-19. The previous fluids for standard anti-bacterial fogging were the same price, so I think people were willing to pay for the convenience of flipping a switch to disinfect a place. In any event, it sure does seem the company was very lucky to have been in the right place at the right time.

 

Also, the manufacturer says you can"t be in the room with this fog and have to let it air out for 20 minutes before coming back in.

 

I know, but after reading everything I could about what's in the fluids (I wasn't going to spray something in my house without knowing what it was), I suspect that might have something to do with keeping lawyers at bay. Of course I certainly wouldn't eat it or anything :) I think a bigger potential problem is that if you go heavy on the fog, it could set off smoke detectors and if you have them automatically wired into sprinkler systems...now, that would be a major issue.

 

As to where the review is going to appear, I was asked by Full Compass to evaluate it and write a review. I did note that a lot of the companies selling it are A/V companies who need to disinfect sound stages, public places, studios, etc. I don't think it's being pitched at the average consumer, it's a B-to-B kind of thing.

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We have been seeing B roll for a while showing fogging down subway cars and even city streets. But I've always wondered as I thought in the case of Covid that the virus pretty well self destructed after a few hours on most surfaces anyway. So that along with info that surfaces aren"t really the primary ways one could catch it just leaves me wondering.

 

Obviously we"ll know a lot more about this in 5 years when a lot more research has been done. Everyone had to jump on this quickly so it leads to a lot of course corrections along the way. But that"s the way science works.

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How would these chemicals effect the taste of the food?

 

Dan

 

Smell is a big part of taste, no? I think if you ate vanilla ice cream close to somebody frying garlic it would not taste the same. Might be good but different.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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How would these chemicals effect the taste of the food?

 

Dan

 

Well, you wouldn't want to spray while you're eating. It puts a thin layer on surfaces, and the scent goes away after a while.

 

Apparently one of the main customers is houses of worship, which makes sense...with all those people singing, who knows what's going to end up on the floor and other surfaces.

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There is something... strange going on with thymol. My wife ordered a couple of cans of the Second Generation spray back when Lysol disappeared (and still hasn't returned....? ) and what I read back in April runs counter to what one sees now about the efficacy of thymol on *viruses*. It seemed ineffective based on studies I read back then, but now there are new studies... which is... interesting.

 

But more interesting to me is far-UV-C light, which apparently kills coronavirus but supposedly isn't destructive to human tissue. Which I don't know if I'm brave enough to trust that, either, but there are existing UV systems for disinfecting rooms hospitals use, and ultra-super sketchy handheld devices you can get from China, that you can see Median people demonstrate on YouTube without regard to their corneas or skin.

 

If i drove an Uber I would plexiglas off my seat from the rest of the car, there is no way of actively sanitizing air in that close of a distance without resorting to Trump Medicine involving breathing Lysol or injecting it.

Guitar Lessons in Augusta Georgia: www.chipmcdonald.com

Eccentric blog: https://chipmcdonaldblog.blogspot.com/

 

/ "big ass windbag" - Bruce Swedien

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I'm surprised one of the CPAP companies haven't made a kit to modify a CPAP mask//systto have a N95-100 filter on it.

 

 

It seems odd to me the CPAP companies have not tried to market a mask system for the medical industry. Friends working in hospitals are having to rely on generic masks, that are not perfectly air tight - CPAP silicone masks are way superior, and if you took just the seal/frame part of the mask and modded it to clamp filter paper over it, you'd have a much better mask.

Guitar Lessons in Augusta Georgia: www.chipmcdonald.com

Eccentric blog: https://chipmcdonaldblog.blogspot.com/

 

/ "big ass windbag" - Bruce Swedien

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