Our partners at Consumer Reports put air purifiers to the test

Americans spend more than $500 million on air cleaners each year. But do they really purify the air like they promise? The video spot for LightAir air cleaners promises that they can protect you from dangerous pollutants. Consumer Reports tested the $300 LightAir Ion Flow 50-F Surface, along with more than two dozen other portable air cleaners.

To evaluate how well they remove dust and smoke, testers place them in a special sealed room. The chamber is filled with fine, powdered clay dust, as well as cigarette smoke. Testers use a particle analyzer to measure how well the air cleaners remove the contaminants. Testers found the LightAir about as effective at removing dust and smoke as using no air cleaner at all.

An air cleaner from Brookstone, the PureIon Pro, did far better removing dust and smoke. But it produces a small amount of ozone, which can aggravate asthma. The Brookstone meets voluntary standards on ozone levels. But Consumer Reports does not recommend any product that produces ozone.

Consumer Reportssays even if you do have asthma or allergies, you probably don't need any air cleaner. To improve air quality, put dust-mite covers on your mattress and pillows. Don’t use a fireplace or let pets in your bedroom.    

If you’ve taken those steps and still think you need an air purifier, Consumer Reports found some that are good at dust and smoke removal. The Holmes HAP756-U air cleaner for $150 is a good choice.

Consumer Reports says there’s another inexpensive way to improve the air in your home. If you heat and cool with forced air, you can replace the filter with better one— something you need to do every couple of months. Consumer Reports tests found that the $25 the 3M Filtrete Elite Allergen 2200 MPR filter does an excellent job removing dust and pollen.

Charity golf tournament has new meaning for Doug DeCinces

On this morning, like every morning of his young life, Beckett Williams dances into the living room hardwood wearing flannel pajamas with feet and knows it's time for therapy.

Beckett, the 2-year-old grandson of former Angels All-Star third baseman Doug DeCinces, climbs into a cushioned chair in front of the television. His mother, Amy, puts a black vest over his shoulders and fastens the Velcro straps snuggly around his tiny chest.

Then she gently places a nebulizer mask over his mouth and nose, its hose delivering puffs of warm medicated air to inhale. She turns on a small medical device that rapidly inflates and deflates the vest, filling the room with a familiar rattle and hum of the air compressor.

His father, T.J., turns up the volume on "Top Gun," Beckett's favorite movie. The boy loves airplanes and Angels baseball.

Everything on his 31/2-foot body — the guitars on his pajamas, his curly blond hair, his tiny fingers and covered feet — shakes, loosening whatever mucus builds in his lungs and moving it toward larger airways so he can breathe more easily.

When Beckett was 12 days old, he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a genetic defect that causes the body's mucus-producing cells to produce thick secretions. For 30 minutes every morning and night, he wears the vest that beats on his chest wall. The disease is relentless.

"When a child has CF, everything that is normal changes," said Amy Williams, who, until Beckett got the vest when he was a year old, took turns with T.J. patting on 12 spots on their son's chest and back for daily therapy.

"This is our normal."

A black and white photo of Beckett wearing an Angels cap and T-shirt and crawling onto third base at Angel Stadium adorns the invitation to the Angels Baseball Foundation 65 Roses Golf Classic benefiting the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The annual event, started by former Angel Don Baylor 33 years ago, take places Sunday and Monday at Los Coyotes Country Club in Buena Park.

"Knowing Don, I played in 17 of these events over the years before finding out that CF hit close to home," said DeCinces, an Angel from 1982-87 who resides in Laguna Beach.

"Watching Beckett grow up has been very emotional, and seeing how my family has handled everything to try to give him the best chances at living a full life has made me very proud."

65 Roses takes its name from how young children tried to say "cystic fibrosis." DeCinces, in the early years of the event, remembers meeting CF children who would die before they were 10. But with early diagnosis and medical advances in treatment, CF patients can live well into adulthood.

Beckett's parents, T.J, who is in real estate, and Amy, who designs new home interiors, are self-employed so they can be home to care for Beckett and their older son, Brody, 4. They deal with CF as a family.

After morning therapy, Beckett, freed from vest and mask, scrambles out to the backyard with his brother, dodging overturned Big Wheels, toy cars, a batting tee, plastic bat and Wiffle ball, to climb onto a large trampoline. The two run and jump high, the motion triggering Beckett to cough.

"This is a good thing," says Amy, watching her sons chase each other before Beckett hops for safety into her arms.

The parents have taken every step to keep Beckett healthy. All visitors wash their hands with sanitizer. The windows in Beckett's room are kept closed and the air purifier stays on beside his crib.

Shoes stay outside to keep dirt off the floors that are now wood instead of the dust-trapping carpet. Even their two Labradoodles play on artificial grass so the dogs don't drag soil into the home.

"The boys are too young to understand what CF is but they've handled everything really well," said T.J. Williams, who became active in CF charities last year and is chairman of this year's 65 Roses event. "We have a lot of fun."

The family went to Disneyland last month and bought Beckett's duck caller, which, like all the whistles and the harmonica around the house, get him to blow, breathe and strengthen his lungs.

They went to the Miramar Air Show so Beckett could watch the planes. They made it to a half dozen Angels games this season so Brody, who likes to smack home runs in the backyard, can see baseball and Beckett could clap at the sight of fireworks.

DeKalb kills proposed smoking ban

Four of the commissioners present agreed with owners of DeKalb’s eight adult clubs and 20 other nightclubs, that the ban would hurt business.

Commissioners Jeff Rader and Kathie Gannon dissented, and Commissioner Lee May was absent.

“I don’t want us going down a slippery slope where we end up telling people what they can do in their own home,” said Larry Johnson, the commission’s presiding officer. “You start in the business realm and we could have some unintended consequences.”

The vote drew out more than 100 supporters and opponents, who have battled over the proposal since the county Board of Health first unveiled it four months ago.

Opponents cited expected business losses – customers of some clubs could travel just a few miles into Fulton or Gwinnett counties to smoke at bars there – as well as the right for clients and customers to make their own choices about smoking.

But supporters argued that second-hand smoke costs every DeKalb household $548 in direct healthcare charges each year.

“We keep hearing about choice, and I wish we did have a choice,” said Gordon Draves, a member of Live Healthy DeKalb. “I would like the choice of not having to pay the medical bills for smokers.”

Compromise appeared a possibility, when some club owners asked not for an outright rejection of the ban but for the chance to install air purifiers and filters in smoking establishments.

Rader also tried a substitute bill, which would have given club owners two years before the ban took effect, to adapt to a new business model and also encourage neighboring counties to adopt similar bans.

That effort failed 4-2, with only Gannon voting with Rader in support.

“I (was) hoping we could move ahead to establish DeKalb as a leader in this area,” Rader said. “DeKalb’s future depends on health, biotech and science industries that take this kind of ordinance very seriously.”

The commission did not discuss some of the less controversial parts of the proposal, such as banning smoking in parks. The board of health did not separate those elements from its overall recommendation, though some expected commissioners to break those items out in order to approve at least part of the proposal.

Johnson said that the commission may elect on its own to revive those pieces, possibly by year’s end.

DeKalb adopted its current smoking ordinance, which bans it in all enclosed workplaces but exempts bars and restaurants where people under 18 cannot work or enter, in 2003 . Georgia adopted a statewide version of that law, the Smokefree Air Act, two years later.

Twisted ethics of an expert witness

Earlier this year, a four-page document with a bland title, "Stipulation for Dismissal with Prejudice," was filed in a civil matter percolating on the King County Courthouse's ninth floor. Hardly anyone took notice. Most everyone had moved on.

But that document — filed by lawyers tangled up in the estate of Stuart Greenberg, a nationally renowned psychologist whose life ended in scandal — signaled the end of a tortuous undertaking.

Greenberg had proved such a toxic force — a poison coursing through the state's court system — that it took more than three years for lawyers and judges to sift through his victims and account for the damage done.

For a quarter century Greenberg testified as an expert in forensic psychology, an inscrutable field with immense power. Purporting to offer insight into the human condition, he evaluated more than 2,000 children, teenagers and adults. His word could determine which parent received custody of a child, or whether a jury believed a claim of sexual assault, or what damages might be awarded for emotional distress.

At conferences and in classrooms, in Washington and beyond, he taught others to do what he did. He became his profession's gatekeeper, quizzing aspirants, judging others' work, writing the national-certification exam. His peers elected him their national president.

But his formidable career was built upon a foundation of hypocrisy and lies. In the years since Greenberg's death, while court officials wrestled over his estate, The Seattle Times worked to unearth Greenberg's secrets, getting court records unsealed and disciplinary records opened.

Those records are a testament to Greenberg's cunning. They show how he played the courts for a fool. He played state regulators for a fool. He played his fellow psychologists for a fool. And were it not for a hidden camera, he might have gotten away with it.

In summer 1984, Cathy Graden, a 27-year-old surgical nurse from Woodinville, was summoned to King County Superior Court for an emergency hearing in her child-custody case.

Her lawyer said a psychologist's report was behind the hearing. But Graden wasn't allowed to read the report. Nor was she allowed in the courtroom while the psychologist testified.

The psychologist, Stuart Greenberg, had been hired to help resolve a custody dispute involving Graden's only child, a 4-year-old boy whose bright, goopy finger-paintings Graden taped up all over the house.

Although appointed by the court, Greenberg was paid by the parties. He had interviewed the boy and both parents, and run a half-dozen tests with impressive names (the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist, the Michigan Screening Profile of Parenting ... ).

Graden figured she had nothing to fear. She taught Sunday school; she did volunteer work; she had taken care of her son when the boy's father moved to Alaska after the couple's divorce. "I thought there was no way I could possibly lose this," she says.

Greenberg had arrived in Seattle five years earlier, hired by the University of Washington. A letter written by the department chairman called Greenberg a "last-minute replacement" for a psychology professor who'd resigned. Greenberg's credentials "were on hand," because he'd applied for some other position.

His credentials were acceptable but not extraordinary. He had a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, where his thesis was a word salad: "Stimulus and Response Generalization of Classes of Imitative and Non-imitative Behavior as a Function of Reinforcement, Task, Cues, and Number of Therapists." On Washington's psychology licensing test, one examiner marked Greenberg's professional judgment as "good," his knowledge and skills, "okay."

Teaching, Greenberg earned just $15,300 his first year. His second year, he was assigned only a single evening class. He left the university and moved into private practice. He picked up court appointments in Western Washington as a custody investigator, expert evaluator, arbiter, mediator, guardian ad litem, special master. He became enmeshed in the court system, buddying up to lawyers, judges, fellow experts.

On the stand, he radiated confidence. "He was just kind of a notch above the rest of us," says Nick Wiltz, a fellow forensic psychologist. "He was able to present reports and information in a very powerful way."

But Greenberg also demonstrated dubious judgment and a cavalier attitude toward his ethical obligations, which forbade even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Using Gadgets to Zap Germs

TOILET SEATS get a bad rap, says Charles Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona. Indeed, because of what goes on there, we tend to consider bathrooms — even the most respectable bathrooms — as generally less than sterile. That view, it turns out, is unfair.

In numerous studies, Dr. Gerba and his colleagues have found that toilet seats are often one of the least germ-infested areas in your house. Much of the rest of the bathroom, too, isn’t especially toxic. If you’re really worried about germs, look to the kitchen.

“Cutting boards are just terrible,” Dr. Gerba said, by way of example. “There’s 200 times more bacteria on a cutting board than a toilet seat.”

I got to talking to Dr. Gerba — who has been studying the spread of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens in households for so long that many of his colleagues call him Dr. Germ — because lately I’ve had cleanliness on the brain. I’ve been testing several gadgets that promise to reduce or eliminate many household pathogens: devices to sanitize your cellphone, your toothbrush, your bedding, your floors, your countertops, and even the very air circulating through your home.

One by one, I put these gadgets through their paces. But then what? Germs’ power derives from their invisibility. And that’s the trouble with fully evaluating these high-tech germ destroyers — how would I know that they were working well? To find out, I asked Dr. Gerba, who is not paid to endorse any of the products I tested, and he said I’d more or less have to take it on faith. The good news is that we know a lot about sanitizing, but as to claims of a specific product’s effectiveness, firm answers are hard to get without your own lab.

Consider the VIOlight UV Cell Phone Sanitizer, a $40 device that promises to eliminate 99.9 percent of the bacteria and other nasties sitting on your phone. It purports to do so by using a beam of ultraviolet light, which is a specific wavelength of light that, when focused precisely, penetrates and damages the DNA of microorganisms. Dr. Gerba said that ultraviolet-based systems have been used in commercial and industrial sanitizing applications for many years. The technology is now getting small and inexpensive enough to be found in many consumer devices, too. In fact, most of the devices I tested used UV light as their primary cleaning agent.

The cellphone cleaner, a hunk of silver plastic as big as a soap dispenser, is simple to use: Just drop your phone inside and shut the lid. A light on the front blinks on and off to tell you it’s working. After about 5 minutes, the sanitizing is done. When you pull your phone out, it won’t look or smell any cleaner — the sanitizer isn’t meant to remove smudges or stains — but presumably the UV light has killed off everything microscopic.

Presumably: On the one hand, UV light is a proven sanitizer. But on the other I honestly have no idea if this particular cleaner did its job well.

Dr. Gerba added that, with cellphones, it may not matter much. Even if you assume that the sanitizer is decimating the phone’s microscopic inhabitants, it’s unlikely that your phone was covered in anything really dangerous. “Cellphones can get fairly germy, but it’s only your germs,” Dr. Gerba said. “Unless you’re sharing your phone with other people, there’s nothing to worry about.” (Dr. Gerba is asked about the necessity of cellphone sanitizing so often that he has a quip at the ready: “It keeps you from talking dirty.”)

You’re on slightly firmer ground with another VIOlight device — the $30 toothbrush sanitizer. This looks like a standard toothbrush holder, but when you press a button on the front, a UV light shines on the germs on your brushes (the unit holds up to four). According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Dentistry, toothbrushes treated with the VIOlight had 86 percent fewer “colony-forming units” — a measure of germs — than toothbrushes that were just rinsed in cold water. The study does note, however, that there’s no proof that a cleaner toothbrush results in better oral health.

UV light can also help with your cutting board, that epicenter of household filth. For this, I tried the CleanWave Sanitizing Wand, a $70 device made by Verilux. The wand looks like a shrunken light saber, and to attack your germs, you can play Luke Skywalker. Turn on the wand, hold one edge against a flat surface — your cutting board, your countertop, your desk — and slowly move it back and forth over the area you’d like to sanitize.

Ryan Douglas, the chief executive of Verilux, said that when he cleans with the wand, he can tell that it’s working. “As you wand over an area, there’s a ‘freshness’ you can smell when the biological material is killed,” Mr. Douglas said.