PurO3 Ozonated Olive Oil: What It Is, and What the Evidence Shows
If you are looking into PurO3 ozonated olive oil, the first thing worth knowing is chemical rather than commercial: once olive oil has had ozone bubbled through it, it is no longer olive oil in any regulated sense. The reaction changes the fat itself. One commercial ozonated olive oil evaluated in a 2026 laboratory study was specified at 800 mEq O₂/kg — a peroxide value roughly forty times the maximum permitted for extra virgin olive oil. That single number tells you more about what this product category is than any amount of marketing copy. This article covers what PurO3 sells, what ozonation does, what the research has actually measured, and where the rules sit.
For our own oil — an ordinary culinary extra virgin, not an ozonated one — see our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil.
The Short Answer
- PurO3 is a family-owned company in the United States trading as PurO3 Activated Oxygen Skin Care. Its ozone-infused olive oil is sold as a topical skincare product, in sizes from a 1 fl oz tube up to bulk drums, with organic extra virgin olive oil as the base.
- PurO3 publishes no ozone concentration for it. Reading its ingredients page, its product record and every size variant in August 2026, the strength of its oils is described only in relative terms — which oil holds more ozone than another — never as a measured figure.
- Ozonation breaks the carbon–carbon double bonds in the oil's unsaturated fats and converts them into ozonides and peroxides. The oil thickens, sometimes to a gel, and its peroxide value rises by orders of magnitude.
- The research base is small and lopsided. Searching Europe PMC this week, 60 records carry "ozonated olive oil" in the title; 17 of them sit in dental or oral journals. Fifteen are flagged as randomised.
- We make no therapeutic claim for this product of any kind, and we are not going to tell you to use it or avoid it for a medical purpose. If you have a wound, a skin condition or an oral problem, that is a conversation for a clinician who can actually see it.
- The regulatory position is partly clear and partly not. We set out below exactly what we could establish from primary sources and exactly what we could not.
What PurO3 Sells, in Its Own Words
PurO3 trades at puro3.com and describes itself as a family-owned business manufacturing in the United States; the site footer carries the name PurO3 Activated Oxygen Skin Care. The range is organised into signature oils, oral health, glycerin, beauty and body, supplements and suppositories, outdoor products, pets and samples.
The ozone-infused olive oil is one of seven ozonated oils in the signature range — alongside sunflower, jojoba, jojoba with rose, coconut, hemp and castor. The company states that it uses "only organic, extra virgin olive oil" as the base. Sizes run from a 1 fl oz tube and a 2 fl oz jar up to quarts, gallons and cases. The product description itself is notably restrained, calling the oil "a clean and balanced skincare option" and "a go-to staple for those who prefer a more emollient texture in their daily routine".
Elsewhere on the site the register is different. PurO3's own pages make a range of claims for ozone and for its individual base oils and carry practitioner testimonials; we do not reproduce any of them here, and nothing in this article should be read as repeating or endorsing them.
What is missing is a number. There is no stated ozone concentration, no peroxide value and no certificate of analysis for the olive oil on the product page, on any of its eight size variants, on the ingredients page or on the product-selection page. The nearest the site gets is a relative ranking — hemp is described as holding more ozone than any other oil in the range, sunflower as the second strongest. That is a comparison, not a measurement.
What Ozonation Actually Does to Olive Oil
Olive oil is predominantly oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat, which typically makes up somewhere between 55% and 83% of the fatty-acid profile depending on origin and varietal. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats contain carbon–carbon double bonds, and those double bonds are what ozone attacks. Bubble ozone through a vegetable oil and it cleaves them, producing ozonides and related peroxidic species. The 2020 review by Ugazio and colleagues in Molecules describes the result as a reservoir in which "ozone can be held as ozonides of unsaturated fatty acids" and released slowly.
Three things follow, and they are worth stating plainly because they are the whole distinction.
First, the oil physically changes. It thickens — sometimes into a gel or a semi-solid — and its colour and smell change with it. The same review notes drawbacks including an unpleasant odour and high viscosity, and lists irritation and rashes among undesired effects on skin.
Second, the peroxide value goes through the roof. Peroxide value is the standard freshness and oxidation measure for an edible oil, and under the International Olive Council trade standard and the equivalent EU rules an extra virgin olive oil must sit at 20.0 milliequivalents of active oxygen per kilogram or below. The commercial ozonated olive oil evaluated by Oltmanns and colleagues in Pathogens in 2026 was specified at 800 mEq O₂/kg. That is not a marginal failure; it is a different substance.
Third — and this follows from the second — an ozonated olive oil cannot be sold as extra virgin olive oil, and PurO3 does not attempt to. It is sold as a topical.
| Property | Extra virgin olive oil | Ozonated olive oil |
|---|---|---|
| Peroxide value | Must be ≤ 20.0 meq O₂/kg | 800 mEq O₂/kg for the commercial product characterised in Oltmanns 2026 |
| Free acidity | Must be ≤ 0.80% | Not a defined parameter for the product |
| Sensory requirement | Defect median 0.0, fruity median above 0.0 | Not applicable; odour is commonly described as unpleasant |
| Physical form | Free-flowing liquid | Thickened; often a gel or semi-solid |
| Sold as | Food | Topical product, not food |
If the underlying chemistry of the intact oil is what you are actually interested in, our guide to olive oil polyphenols covers the compounds ozonation would be reacting away.
What the Research Has and Hasn't Measured
The first useful thing to know about this literature is its shape. Searching Europe PMC in August 2026 for "ozonated olive oil", "ozonised olive oil" and "ozonized olive oil" in the title returns 60 records. Seventeen of those sit in dental, oral, endodontic, periodontal or orthodontic journals. Fifteen carry a randomised-trial flag. The remainder are in-vitro work, animal models and reviews. A body of evidence that size, concentrated that heavily in one clinical speciality, cannot support broad conclusions — and it is a long way from the scale of evidence behind treatments that clinicians actually reach for.
Three studies are worth naming, with their designs and their limits in the same breath.
| Study | Design and size | What it measured | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vahedi et al., Lipids in Health and Disease 2025;24(1):291 (PMID 41024096) | Randomised controlled trial, single centre in Hormozgan Province, Iran, Jan–Dec 2024; n = 123 (62 vs 61) adults aged 18–75 with type-2 diabetes and Wagner grade 1–2 foot ulcers; 4 weeks | Daily topical ozonated olive oil against standard care; wound severity on the Bates-Jensen scale, quality of life, HbA1c and glucose, lipid panel, hs-CRP, IL-6, TNF-α | Compared against standard care rather than a matched placebo dressing, with no blinding described; one centre; four weeks; wound outcome is a severity score, not complete healing. Systemic changes in glucose and lipids from a topical dressing are a large claim with no mechanism established in the paper. |
| Coppola et al., Children 2025;12(5):549 (PMID 40426728) | Prospective randomised trial; 86 boys, median age 18 months, after distal hypospadias repair; ozonide spray with vitamin E acetate versus hyaluronic acid cream, twice daily for 2–3 weeks | Time to wound healing and adverse skin reactions after surgery | The intervention was a proprietary ozonide spray formulated with vitamin E acetate — not a retail jar of ozonated olive oil — so the result does not transfer to a shop-bought product. Small, single centre, active comparator, one surgical wound type in infants. |
| Oltmanns et al., Pathogens 2026;15(3):323 (PMID 41901776) | Ex vivo canine skin model using a commercial ozonated olive oil specified at 800 mEq O₂/kg | Activity against meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius on excised canine skin | An ex vivo animal-skin model is a laboratory system, not a living patient of any species. Whatever it shows, it cannot establish a clinical outcome in people. |
The pattern here should be familiar to anyone who has followed a supplement claim to its source. There is real laboratory work; there are a handful of small clinical trials, mostly unblinded, mostly single-centre, several of them dental; and there is a very large gap between that and a settled finding. We reached the same conclusion, for the same structural reasons, when we looked at C60 olive oil.
One more thing that is missing rather than present: because manufacturers do not publish ozonide content, the products used in published trials cannot be matched to the products on sale. Two jars labelled "ozonated olive oil" can differ enormously in how far the ozonation was taken. Without a number on the label, a reader cannot tell whether the thing in the study is the thing in the jar.
Cosmetic, Food or Medicine? Where the Rules Actually Sit
We checked this against the primary texts rather than relying on summaries, and the honest answer is that part of it is clear and part of it is not.
As a cosmetic in the UK and EU, the position is clear. Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 defines a cosmetic product at Article 2(1)(a) as one intended for the external parts of the body, or the teeth and oral mucous membranes, "with a view exclusively or mainly to cleaning them, perfuming them, changing their appearance, protecting them, keeping them in good condition or correcting body odours". Wound healing is not on that list. Article 14 operates positive lists only for colorants, preservatives and UV filters — so an ozonated vegetable oil needs no pre-market authorisation as an ingredient, but the finished product still requires a responsible person and a safety assessment. Article 20(1) then states that claims "shall not be used to imply that these products have characteristics or functions which they do not have", with Article 20(2) requiring compliance with the common criteria in Commission Regulation (EU) No 655/2013.
The practical consequence is straightforward: the moment a product is presented as treating or healing something, it stops being a cosmetic and falls into the medicines or medical-devices regime instead.
As a food, the US position on ozone is clear and the GB position is not. In the United States, 21 CFR 173.368 provides that ozone (CAS Reg. No. 10028-15-6) "may be safely used in the treatment, storage, and processing of foods" as an antimicrobial agent, meeting the Food Chemicals Codex specification. That authorises ozone as something applied to food during processing. It does not authorise selling an ozonated oil as a food, and PurO3 does not do so.
For Great Britain we could not establish ozone's status on the current authorised food-additive list, and the reason is worth recording: Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 — the list of permitted additives — was omitted from the assimilated GB text on 1 April 2025 by the Food and Feed (Regulated Products) (Amendment, Revocation, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2025, S.I. 2025/361, and the list now sits in a separate register. EUR-Lex was serving a degraded service when we attempted the EU equivalent. We are therefore not going to assert a GB or EU food position we have not verified. Treat it as unresolved.
As a medicine or a medical device, we could not verify anything either way. We found no UK or EU marketing authorisation and no medical-device certification for an ozonated olive oil, but an absence in our search is not proof of an absence in the register. That position, too, should be read as unclear rather than settled.
| Question | What we could establish | Primary source |
|---|---|---|
| Can it be a cosmetic in GB/EU? | Yes in principle — no ingredient pre-authorisation, but a safety assessment and a responsible person are required, and healing claims fall outside the cosmetic definition | Reg. (EC) No 1223/2009, Arts 2(1)(a), 14, 20 |
| Is ozone permitted on food in the US? | Yes — as an antimicrobial agent in treatment, storage and processing | 21 CFR 173.368 |
| Is ozone an authorised food additive in GB/EU? | Unresolved — the GB list was moved out of the assimilated regulation in April 2025 and we could not confirm it this week | S.I. 2025/361 amending Reg. (EC) No 1333/2008 |
| Is any ozonated olive oil a licensed medicine or certified device? | Unresolved — we found none, which is not the same as there being none | — |
Ozone Is a Respiratory Irritant — and Why That Is a Separate Point
This belongs in any honest article about ozone products, and it needs to be stated carefully because it is easy to overstretch.
The United States Food and Drug Administration maintains a standing regulation on ozone-generating devices at 21 CFR 801.415, headed "Maximum acceptable level of ozone". It opens: "Ozone is a toxic gas with no known useful medical application in specific, adjunctive, or preventive therapy. In order for ozone to be effective as a germicide, it must be present in a concentration far greater than that which can be safely tolerated by man and animals." It goes on to record that the predominant physiological effect is primary irritation of the mucous membranes, that inhalation "can cause sufficient irritation to the lungs to result in pulmonary edema", that the onset is usually delayed by some hours so symptoms are not a reliable warning, and that olfactory fatigue makes smell an unreliable index of concentration. Devices are limited to 0.05 parts per million by volume.
Now the caveat that keeps this honest. That regulation is about ozone gas and the devices that generate it. It is not a finding about a sealed jar of oil in which the ozone has already reacted into ozonides. Anyone citing it as a verdict on ozonated oils is stretching it past what it says. What it does establish is that ozone gas is not a benign substance, which is a reasonable thing to have in mind around any product built on it — particularly at the point of manufacture, and particularly with anything that might release it into a small room.
What Ordinary Extra Virgin Olive Oil Is
It is worth resetting the baseline, because the two products get confused in search results and they are not close relatives.
Extra virgin olive oil is the juice of the olive, mechanically extracted, with nothing added and nothing refined out. To carry the grade it must meet both chemical and sensory limits: free fatty acidity no higher than 0.80%, peroxide value no higher than 20.0 meq O₂/kg, K232 no higher than 2.50, K270 no higher than 0.22, delta-K no higher than 0.01, and a trained panel finding a defect median of 0.0 with a fruity median above zero. Our guide to what extra virgin olive oil actually is works through each of those.
On health claims, the position is narrow and specific. Under Commission Regulation (EU) No 432/2012 there is exactly one authorised claim for olive oil polyphenols — that they "contribute to the protection of blood lipids from oxidative stress" — and it "may be used only for olive oil which contains at least 5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives (e.g. oleuropein complex and tyrosol) per 20 g of olive oil", with the further requirement that "information shall be given to the consumer that the beneficial effect is obtained with a daily intake of 20 g of olive oil". That is a dietary claim about eating the oil. It has nothing to say about anything applied to skin.
And if what brought you here was a question about putting olive oil on your skin at all, our honest look at olive oil for skin covers what is known, including where the evidence points the other way.
Three Objections Worth Taking Seriously
"There are randomised trials — why are you hedging?" Because the trials that exist are small, mostly unblinded, largely single-centre, heavily concentrated in dentistry, and in at least one case used a formulated proprietary product rather than the thing on the shelf. Randomisation is necessary, not sufficient. Reporting a trial's design and limits alongside its result is not hedging; it is what citing it properly looks like.
"Practitioners and long-time users say it works." They do, and we are not going to be snide about that. People reach for these products because something is bothering them and they want it to stop. But an uncontrolled experience cannot distinguish a product's effect from the natural course of the problem, from the dressing, from the moisturising base, or from expectation — which is precisely why controlled trials exist. It is a fair reason to be curious. It is not evidence.
"Isn't this just a competitor talking down a rival product?" It genuinely isn't, and the commercial logic makes that obvious: a topical ozonated oil is not competing with a culinary extra virgin for the same purchase. Nobody dresses a salad with one and nobody is choosing between them. We wrote this because the search results for it are thin and mostly promotional, not because there is a sale in it.
Why Sidr & Stone
We sell one olive oil and it is a food. We have no ozonated product, no topical line and no clinical claim to make, and the way we would like to be judged is on what we are willing to state precisely.
- Single-estate — one family-owned grove on the plains outside Marrakech, Morocco; no blending across origins.
- Rain-fed — no irrigation; the trees take what the season gives.
- Organically grown — no synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides. We do not hold a formal organic certificate and we do not call ourselves certified organic.
- Single harvest — a small, limited batch pressed once a season.
- Cold-pressed within hours of harvest — flavour, aroma and polyphenols preserved.
- Unfiltered extra virgin — minimally processed, and it may show natural sediment.
- 100% natural — one ingredient, no additives.
- Dark glass with a gold label — protective packaging against light.
- Halal certified.
- 10% of profits to charity, across every product we sell.
- Fulfilment in the UK, EU and US.
We do not publish a polyphenol figure for our own oil — our first harvest has not been through a laboratory panel, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise. We will not tell you Sidr & Stone is the best olive oil. What we will say is that it is single-estate Moroccan, rain-fed, organically grown and cold-pressed within hours of harvest, and that it is meant for a kitchen.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is PurO3 ozonated olive oil?
It is a topical product made by bubbling ozone through organic extra virgin olive oil until the oil thickens. PurO3 sells it as skincare in sizes from a 1 fl oz tube to bulk containers. It is not sold as a food and it is not olive oil in the regulated sense once ozonated.
Is ozonated olive oil still extra virgin olive oil?
No. Ozonation cleaves the double bonds in the oil's unsaturated fats and drives the peroxide value far above the 20.0 meq O₂/kg ceiling for extra virgin. The commercial product characterised in a 2026 study was specified at 800 mEq O₂/kg.
What ozone concentration does PurO3 publish?
None that we could find. Across the olive oil product record and all eight of its size variants, the ingredients page and the product-selection page, strength is described only by comparing the oils to one another, never as a measured figure.
Should I use ozonated olive oil for a wound or a skin condition?
That is not a question we are going to answer either way, and you should be wary of anyone selling it who does. Take it to a doctor, pharmacist or dentist who can examine the actual problem and knows your history.
What does the research actually cover?
A small literature, weighted heavily towards dentistry, made up mostly of in-vitro work, animal models and a handful of small clinical trials. The named studies in the table above set out what each one measured and what it cannot establish.
Is ozone dangerous?
Ozone gas is a recognised respiratory irritant — the FDA's standing regulation on ozone-generating devices at 21 CFR 801.415 describes it as a toxic gas and limits device output to 0.05 parts per million. That regulation concerns the gas and the devices, not a bottled oil in which the ozone has already reacted.
Can you cook with ozonated olive oil?
It is not sold as a food and is not intended for eating. If you want olive oil for cooking, buy an ordinary extra virgin and check the harvest date — our guide to choosing a quality olive oil covers what to look for.
Is olive oil a medicine?
No. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine. It has a long traditional history — including being honoured in the Prophetic Sunnah — and a substantial body of modern research, particularly around polyphenols, cardiovascular health, and the Mediterranean diet pattern. It can be a worthwhile part of a healthy routine, but it does not cure diseases and is not a substitute for medical care. Be cautious of any olive oil marketed with specific disease-cure claims.
Final Thoughts
The most useful thing we can give a reader searching for this product is a clear description of what it is. Ozonated olive oil is a chemically altered fat, sold as a topical, with a small and uneven research base behind it and no published concentration on the label. Those are facts, and they hold whatever anyone concludes from them.
What we will not do is fill the gap where the evidence should be. Nothing in this article says the product works and nothing says it does not. It says what has been measured, by whom, in how many people, and under what conditions — and it says where the record runs out. That is the whole of what an honest reading supports, and anyone offering you more certainty than that from this literature is offering you something they do not have.
If a wound, a skin condition or an oral problem is what brought you here, take it to a clinician. If it was olive oil itself, that is a much happier subject. Our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil — single-estate, rain-fed, organically grown, cold-pressed within hours of harvest, and meant for the table — is available to pre-order. First harvest, estimated shipping from November 2026. Fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
Pre-Order Sidr & Stone Organic Marrakech Olive Oil — Limited First Harvest →
Disclaimer: This article describes PurO3's publicly published information and the published research literature as they stood at the time of writing; product ranges, specifications, regulatory positions and research findings may change, and readers should check current sources. Sidr & Stone makes no therapeutic claim of any kind for ozonated oils and does not sell one. Comparisons are made in good faith and in fair terms. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine, and is not a substitute for medical treatment of any condition. For any health concern, consult a qualified medical professional.