What are the symptoms of ozone in the air?

Author: Dahlia Torphy PhD  |  Last update: Sunday, July 6, 2025

Ozone can irritate your respiratory system. When this happens, you may cough, feel irritation or soreness in your throat, or experience chest tightness or pain when taking a deep breath. Reduced lung function can make it more difficult for you to breathe as deeply and easily as you normally would.

What are the symptoms of ozone exposure?

Symptoms include: irritation of the eyes, nose and sinuses; shortness of breath; chest pain; and wheezing or coughing. Other less common symptoms include: blurred vision, headache, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue.

What happens if you breathe in a little ozone?

Conclusions. Whether in its pure form or mixed with other chemicals, ozone can be harmful to health. When inhaled, ozone can damage the lungs. Relatively low amounts of ozone can cause chest pain, coughing, shortness of breath and, throat irritation.

How does high ozone make you feel?

Depending on the level of exposure, ozone can: Cause coughing and sore or scratchy throat. Make it more difficult to breathe deeply and vigorously and cause pain when taking a deep breath. Inflame and damage the airways.

How do you know if you are sensitive to ozone?

People who may be particularly sensitive to ozone include: People with lung diseases, such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema will generally experience more serious health effects at lower ozone levels. experience chest tightness or pain when taking a deep breath.

What Are the Common Symptoms of Ozone Exposure? - Earth Science Answers

What health problems can ozone cause?

Immediate problems—in addition to increased risk of premature death—include:
  • shortness of breath, wheezing and coughing;
  • asthma attacks;
  • increased risk of respiratory infections;
  • increased susceptibility to pulmonary inflammation; and.

How do you test for ozone in the air?

An ozone analyzer measures the real-time ozone concentration in the air. Ambient air is drawn through a sampler inlet from the top of a 10-meter tipping tower by a pump.

What are 3 effects of ozone?

Breathing ground-level ozone can trigger a variety of health problems including chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and congestion. It can worsen bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma.

How to remove ozone from air?

Your best option might be to keep the windows closed, especially on warm and sunny days with little or no wind. Running an air purifier that can remove ozone in your home, either with a carbon filter or using PECO technology, may help lower ozone levels indoors.

Can the smell of ozone make you sick?

Exposure to ozone irritates and inflames the lining of the respiratory system. This causes symptoms including coughing, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and impaired breathing. Ozone can worsen asthma symptoms, and may contribute to the development of asthma.

What to do after inhaling ozone?

Symptoms: Headache, cough, dry throat, heavy chest, shortness of breath. If someone is overcome by ozone inhalation, the following precautions should be adopted: (a) Remove the person to a warm uncontaminated atmosphere and loosen tight clothing at the neck and waist. (b) Keep the person at rest.

Can ozone make you dizzy?

Acute exposure to O3 can elicit neurological symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, fatigue, and mental tension in humans [22,23], suggesting that the CNS effects of O3 may contribute to exposure-associated morbidities such as feelings of illness in the short term.

How long does ozone sickness last?

The effects are reversible, with improvement and recovery to baseline varying from a few hours to 48 hours after an elevated ozone exposure.

How should I feel after ozone?

You might start coughing, feel an irritation in your throat, or experience an uncomfortable sensation in your chest. These symptoms can last for a few hours after ozone exposure and may even become painful.

How does ozone affect the eyes?

Ozone interferes with normal corneal epithelial integrity. Ozone increases inflammatory cytokine levels in tears. Ozone alters mucin-secreting cells. Ozone activates the NF-κB pathway.

Does air conditioning remove ozone?

As previously mentioned, many air conditioners utilize Freon R-22 as a refrigerant, which is considered an ozone-depleting chemical (ODC). The EPA has banned the use of ODCs because they destroy ozone in our upper atmosphere, something that protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays emitted by the sun!

Does boiling water remove ozone?

As such yes it evaporates from the water just like any dissolved gasses do. Think CO2 in carbonated water or fizzy drinks, but at a much slower rate. Boiling water the ozone is likely to break down into oxygen.

What makes ozone go away?

Ozone Depletion. When chlorine and bromine atoms come into contact with ozone in the stratosphere, they destroy ozone molecules. One chlorine atom can destroy over 100,000 ozone molecules before it is removed from the stratosphere. Ozone can be destroyed more quickly than it is naturally created.

What are the symptoms of ozone inhalation?

Adults and children who breathe high levels of ozone for a short period of time (minutes or hours) can experience eye, nose and throat irritation, shortness of breath, chest pain and coughing. Breathing high levels of ozone can worsen asthma symptoms.

What does ozone do to the body?

Ozone can damage the tissues of the respiratory tract, causing inflammation and irritation, and result in symptoms such as coughing, chest tightness and worsening of asthma symptoms. In addition, ozone causes substantial damage to crops, forests and native plants.

What is ozone smell?

Ozone has a very characteristic pungent odor, sometimes described as like chlorine bleach, and it can sometimes be detected after lightning strikes or during electrical discharges. Individual humans vary in their ability to smell ozone; some people can smell it at levels as low as 0.05 ppm.

What causes high ozone in the air?

This happens when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, chemical plants, and other sources chemically react in the presence of sunlight. Ozone is most likely to reach unhealthy levels on hot sunny days in urban environments, but can still reach high levels during colder months.

What two places is ozone found in?

(the stratosphere) and lower atmosphere (the troposphere). Depending on where it is in the atmosphere, ozone affects life on Earth in either good or bad ways. Stratospheric ozone is formed naturally through the interaction of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation with molecular oxygen (O2).

How much ozone is safe?

NIOSH: The recommended airborne exposure limit is 0.1 ppm, which should not be exceeded at any time. ACGIH: The recommended airborne exposure limits are for heavy work, 0.05 ppm; moderate work, 0.08 ppm; light work, 0.1 ppm; and workloads of less than 2 hours, 0.20 ppm; averaged over an 8-hour workshift.

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