Start-Up Facing Backlash over Patented Spider Air Filters

Sugarland, TX — Texas start-up Breathe-Clean® has come under fire for its SpiderEasy line of hypoallergenic air-filters, which feature live genetically modified arachnids who, in the words of company spokesperson Bethany Millbright “eat the particles that humans can’t see.”

Trouble started late last week when beta customers reported thousands of spiders spilling out of their furnace filters and into their homes. Making matters worse, the GMO species of spiders are mainly active at night, which leads to the creatures being unnoticed by most homeowners until they awake in the morning.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said St. Paul, Minneapolis test customer Dale Decker. “I have terrible allergies, and I thought SpiderEasy would help. And they did. But when I got up in the middle of the night to check on the kids, what I thought were Lego pieces on the floor were these spiders. I must have crunched a few hundred.”

According to Breathe-Clean Founder and CEO Dr. Wilhelm Sarcophagus, they might have to go back to the drawing board.

“The idea was that the spiders would live in a self-sustaining colony within the filter’s honeycomb system,” said Dr. Sarcophagus. “But there were a few things we didn’t control for in our lab testing. Things like humidity and a few other environmental vectors. In some parts of the country, the spiders over-reproduced and, more strangely, tripled in size in some instances leading to mass overflows of spider populations.”

According to company spokesperson Bethany Millbright, there’s nothing to be worried about.

“Look, these spiders are harmless,” said Ms. Millbright taking a deep breath. “People get so uneasy about this important insect. And while we are certainly sorry for any inconvenience the few thousand or so spiders might have caused in our test homes, they pose no threat.”

Breathe-Clean has promised to provide eradication services for those customers who are too freaked out to stomp the spiders in their homes.