The company Big Ass Fans has been slapped with almost half a million dollars in penalties for false advertising about their air purifying devices, including claims that their pricey fans can eliminate 99.99% of the virus that causes COVID-19.
On Wednesday, 11 district attorneys in California announced a joint settlement with the company regarding allegations of false and misleading advertising. Kentucky-based Big Ass Fans has agreed to pay a total of $450,000 in penalties and restitution, more than $320,000 of which it will distribute directly to California customers who purchased certain “clean air products,” prosecutors said.
Early in the pandemic, when people were desperate for clean-air devices that could help safely reopen schools and businesses, the company made sweeping claims about their fans’ ability to neutralize pathogens. But prosecutors determined there was “insufficient support for the company’s advertising claims, and that the advertised efficacy rates were not achievable in real world scenarios.”
In June 2020, the company began advertising that fans equipped with their “clean air technology” could kill more than 99% of pathogens, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, using ultraviolet germicidal irradiation and ionization technology, prosecutors said.
These claims quickly drew criticism from air quality experts who said these so-called COVID-killing devices relied on test results run in tiny contained spaces, like a shoebox, and did not reflect efficacy rates in an actual room.
“There’s no other way to say it — it’s completely unproven whether these devices would work in a real-world setting,” Timothy Bertram, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Kaiser Health News in 2021.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also released a statement cautioning against claims made about the the effectiveness of air filters using ionization to protect people from COVID-19.
“This is an emerging technology, and little research is available that evaluates it outside of lab conditions,” the EPA said. “As typical of newer technologies, the evidence for safety and effectiveness is less documented than for more established ones, such as filtration.”
The EPA further warned that ionization technology has the potential to generate ozone and other potentially harmful byproducts indoors.
Big Ass Fans drew further scrutiny when Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the first Trump administration, joined the team as a strategic health and safety advisor in April 2021.
“Proper ventilation has a major role to play in mitigating transmission of COVID-19 and other respiratory pathogens,” Redfield said in a Big Ass Fans news release announcing his new position. “Big Ass Fans is a leader in designing airflow systems and making places where we live, work, and play, safer.”
As part of the settlement agreement, Big Ass Fans is required to comply with an injunction that bars it from making untruthful, deceptive or misleading marketing claims in the future. The settlement was negotiated by the district attorneys of Alameda, Orange, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Solano and Sonoma counties.
