You may have heard of the Molekule air purifier. It pops up in ads left and right, design-minded businesses such as InterContinental Hotels and the MoMA Design Store have embraced it, and influential media outlets including Wired, Time, Popular Science, Architectural Digest, Town & Country, New York Magazine, and The New York Times’s own T Magazine have sung its praises.1 Those places bought into the company’s claims, but the only two publications to actually test it—Wirecutter and Consumer Reports—found it to be abysmal, or, as we put it in our air purifier guide, “the worst air purifier we’ve ever tested.” Now the company is back in the news making some big promises: Founders say they’re “very confident that this technology will destroy Coronavirus” and that the virus is “a rather simple structure for us to be able to be destroy.” And the company just got $58 million in new funding. So is everyone getting duped by simply taking Molekule’s word for it?



Yes, according to an independent report we received from the National Advertising Division (a Better Business Bureau National Program), which overwhelmingly found Molekule’s advertising claims to be unsubstantiated. Rival manufacturer Dyson challenged many of Molekule’s claims about Molekule’s air purifier, the Molekule Air (formerly known as the Molekule Home One or MH1). In an analysis of Molekule’s own testing and other evidence that Molekule submitted in its defense, NAD found that every explicit advertising claim of Molekule’s that Dyson challenged was unsubstantiated. Dyson challenged 26 claims; NAD upheld all 26 challenges. (You can read NAD's summary of the report here.)

This isn’t Dyson simply being litigious. NAD handles about 90 cases of this kind each year. Participation is voluntary, and more than 90 percent of manufacturers that agree to let NAD arbitrate these cases comply with NAD’s findings. A challenger (Dyson, here) pays a filing fee and makes a detailed argument against claims made by an advertiser, which is typically a competitor (Molekule, in this case). Each side presents evidence to NAD in support of its position. NAD examines this evidence and does additional investigations of its own. Then it issues recommendations about the validity of the advertiser’s claims. When NAD finds that an advertiser’s claims are invalid or otherwise inaccurate, it recommends that the claims be withdrawn. If a case is not settled by this process, NAD typically refers it to the Federal Trade Commission, whose judgment is legally binding.

Molekule is appealing some of NAD’s recommendations; a second judgment is expected in the coming weeks.

But Molekule has already agreed to make a breathtaking retreat from many of its long-held claims.

At NAD’s recommendation, Molekule has agreed to withdraw the entirety of its quantified pollution-elimination claims—meaning it no longer stands by the numbers it long touted as “proof” of the Molekule purifier’s “destruction” of VOCs and biological particles. NAD found that the company’s testing comprehensively failed to back up its claims.

Molekule has also agreed to withdraw all of its claims to have been independently tested, after NAD’s investigation found that much of the research was done either at a lab where Molekule’s founder is a director or at a lab that the company sponsors.

And Molekule has agreed to withdraw its claims that the Molekule purifier relieves allergy and asthma symptoms. NAD found both that Molekule’s two small studies of patients were unscientific and vulnerable to bias and that testimonials from doctors in support of the Molekule purifier were unsupported by evidence.

Those are the steps Molekule has already taken in response; NAD’s recommendations go much further. And the NAD case report contains copious evidence of why.

Among the more eye-opening points:

It is recommending that Molekule withdraw all of the challenged claims (not just the quantified ones) about the Molekule purifier’s ability to eliminate pollution. “In sum,” NAD concludes, “the evidence provided by the advertiser was insufficiently reliable to provide a reasonable basis for its impactful pollution elimination performance/efficacy claims.”

It is recommending that Molekule withdraw all of the challenged claims of its performance superiority over HEPA purifiers, after finding that “[n]one of Molekule’s testing provides reliable data against all or a significant portion of competitive products on the market.” (Perhaps because Molekule “did not compare the performance of the MH1 device to even a single competing HEPA air purifier.”)

And NAD is recommending that Molekule withdraw all of its challenged claims that HEPA purifiers can harbor and spread pathogens, finding that the literature Molekule supplied was irrelevant, insufficient, or cherry-picked. (NAD further notes that “a few of the documents submitted were actually supportive of HEPA.”)

Other highlights include Molekule’s position that its claims weren’t referring to the Molekule purifier itself—weren’t referring to the product it was selling—but rather were referring only to the underlying PECO “and other” technology.2 In fact, Molekule based many of its claims on tests of prototypes, or of the PECO filter alone (not of the actual purifier it has been selling since 2017). And Molekule conducted most of its tests in small chambers that bore no relation to real-world home use (that were not, in NAD’s words, “consumer relevant”), and it based claims on comparisons to “devices that are not air filters.”3

The other takeaway of the report is how clearly it shows Molekule’s willingness to change its claims when they’re exposed as false—an issue Wirecutter observed firsthand after the publication of our test results. A report this comprehensive makes it hard to take any of Molekule’s claims seriously.

Footnotes

1. The New York Times is Wirecutter’s parent company.

Jump back.

2. “The advertiser maintains that its advertising claims concern the PECO (and other) technology [emphasis original] underpinning its MH1 air purifier, not the MH1 unit itself. NAD did not agree. It is well established that (in addition to any express claims) an advertiser is obligated to support all reasonable interpretations of claims made in its advertising, including messages it may not have intended to convey. The advertiser’s claims are directed to consumers and appear on Molekule’s website, YouTube videos, social media ads, and other online advertisements. Although the advertising explains the PECO technology, the advertising ties the PECO technology directly to the benefit of using the Molekule air purifier – ‘finally an air purifier that delivers on the promise of clean air.’ Other advertising claims explain the PECO technology and contrasts it with HEPA filters, and explains the difference as tied to the products as used by consumers. The language of the claims and the accompanying imagery, which depicts the Molecule Air Purifier intaking pollutants with images of them being destroyed inside the unit, juxtaposed with images of HEPA filters saturated with dust, expressly and impliedly convey the overarching messages that the MH1 Air Purifier as used in the home destroys or eliminates airborne pollutants to provide meaningful health benefits to allergy and asthma sufferers, and is superior to HEPA-based air purifiers, including those sold by Dyson.” (p. 16)

Jump back.

3. “Air purification devices are intended for use in a room. Molekule submitted several tests, but only one tested the MH1 device in a consumer relevant chamber employing the device according to instructions. NAD’s concerns with that test are discussed below. Other tests evaluated the PECO filters used in chambers that were smaller than a room, applied the challenge pollutants directly to the filter material but did not evaluate the elimination of pollutants as the air purifier would be operated as consumers used the product, according to the manufacturer’s instructions, tested a prototype rather than the MH1, and tests compared the MH1 to devices that are not air filters.” (p. 17)

Jump back.