Coronavirus – Susceptibility to Ozone

Coronavirus Oxidation

Due to the excess energy inherent in the ozone molecule, ozone provides effectiveness across the entire Coronavirus spectrum. In light of its pan-virucidal profile, Ozone also offers the advantage of existing as a gas, with its attendant ability to disinfect poorly accessible spaces.

Moreover, ozone has the distinct benefit of reverting to oxygen, while liquid–based disinfectants such as bleach are likely to damage the surfaces to which they are applied and to leave toxic residues.

Oxidation of Lipid-Enveloped Viruses

Some viruses are more susceptible to ozone’s action than others. It has been found that lipid-enveloped viruses including Coronaviruses are the most sensitive to oxidation processes. This makes intuitive sense, since enveloped viruses are designed to blend into the dynamically constant milieu of their mammalian hosts.

This group includes hepatitis B and C, herpes 1 and 2, Cytomegalus (Epstein-Barr), HIV 1 and 2, Influenza A and B, West Nile virus, Togaviridae, Eastern and Western equine encephalitis, rabies, and Filiviridae (Ebola, Marburg) and of course Coronaviruses among others.

The envelopes of viruses provide for intricate cell attachment, penetration, and cell exit strategies. Peplomers, finely tuned to adjust to changing receptors on a variety of host cells, constantly elaborate slightly new glycoprotein configuration under the direction of portions of the viral genome, thus adapting to host cell defenses. As such, Coronavirus envelopes are fragile and are particularly sensitive to damage by oxidation.

The denaturation of virions through direct contact with ozone.

Ozone is the most powerful commercially available oxidizer on the market and can thus easily disrupt peplomer and lipid membrane processes. Lipid enveloped viruses are readily inactivated by ozone via the oxidation of their envelope lipoproteins and glycoproteins (Akey 1985; Shinriki 1988; Vaughn 1990; Wells 1991; Carpendale 1991).

Ozone, via this mechanism, disrupts viral proteins, lipoproteins, lipids, glycolipids, or glycoproteins. The presence of numerous double bonds in these molecules makes them particularly vulnerable to the oxidizing effects of ozone that readily donates its oxygen atom and accepts electrons in redox reactions.
Unsaturated bonds are thus reconfigured, molecular architecture is disrupted, and breakage of the envelope ensues. Deprived of an envelope, virions cannot sustain nor replicate themselves.

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