Terpene plus ozone makes particles is settled atmospheric chemistry, worked out on forests, where the reaction runs slowly because the terpene supply is thin [6]. Indoors the feedstock changes: Boor puts airborne terpene concentrations during cleaning at tens to hundreds of times forest levels [8]. The reaction did not get more exotic. It got fed.
That makes this a two-reactant exposure, and both reactants arrive by decisions someone in the building makes [1]. One is the product on the cart. The other is the oxidant, which is why the advice to keep ozone-generating devices off while cleaning sits beside the advice to run an exhaust path [10].
The awkward part for anyone who thought they had solved this by buying botanical is the list of common cleaning terpenes: pinene, limonene, thymol and linalool, which is to say pine, lemon, thyme and lavender [7]. Thymol and linalool are what an essential-oil formulation advertises on the label, and the Purdue tests covered botanical disinfectant sprays and wipes alongside scented conventional liquids [1][2]. Specifying essential oils specifies the precursor [2]. What the material does not settle is whether a botanical disinfectant can do its job without those compounds.
Two limits on how hard to lean on the finding. It is a conference presentation at the American Chemical Society's fall 2026 meeting rather than a number-bearing paper in front of us [12], and the roadside comparison is Boor's own characterisation, offered with the caveat that particle composition differs even where the total dose is higher [5]. One instrumented tiny house with a working kitchen, wood flooring and a bathroom is also one building [2].
Set against that, the deposition end is not speculative in the same way: particles in this range settle throughout the airways and deep into the lungs, where they can irritate and inflame, or potentially cross into the bloodstream [13]. The suggested controls are unscented product, exhaust fans, and no ozone-generating device running while you clean [10], which is cheap enough to adopt well before the paper lands.
The last piece is what removing the smell actually costs. Boor and Nusrat Jung began this line of work during the pandemic and found the products heavily scented, often to build a pleasant smellscape [15]; Boor's own line is that clean air should not smell of concentrated citrus, and should not really smell of anything [14]. Where the fragrance is doing perception work rather than cleaning work, taking it out costs only the perception.
