By PAUL ELIAS
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Consumer Reports magazine is taking renewed aim at a
popular air purifier made by The Sharper Image two months after it fended off a
libel lawsuit filed by the machine's retailer.

The magazine reports in its latest issue hitting newsstands Tuesday that
Sharper Image's Ionic Breeze Quadra Silent Air Purifier and four other similar
machines fail to significantly clean the air - but also release potentially
unhealthy levels of ozone.

The article is being published two months after San Francisco-based Sharper
Image agreed to pay the magazine's publisher, Consumers Union, $525,000 in
legal costs after a judge dismissed its libel suit. The failed lawsuit alleged
that earlier magazine articles highly critical of the Ionic Breeze's ability to
reduce airborne particles were false and malicious.

Company lawyer E. Robert Wallach said Sharper Image was evaluating how to
respond to the article, which advised against buying the machines. More than 2
million of the $350 units have been sold.

"It is astonishing that Consumers Union would continue its misguided efforts
to attack the judgment and experience of millions of Americans who are
satisfied with the performance of the Ionic Breeze products,'' Wallach said in a
statement.

In a statement of its own, Consumer Reports said the magazine's latest
article is accurate and that the nonprofit organization had called on federal
regulators to look at the advertising claims being made by sellers of the five air
purifiers it examined.

"All of these 'not recommended' products did a poor job in our tests of
removing dust, smoke and pollen from the air,'' the statement said. "In addition,
all five of these products failed in Consumer Reports' labs the standard
industry test for ozone generation.''

Consumers Union is based in Yonkers, N.Y.

04/04/05 20:35

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