Chinese Entrepreneur Offers Canned Designer Air To Citizens Suffering From Smog

It's a publicity stunt, but a good one. Chen Guangbiao wants to bring attention to China's air quality problem before it's too late.

By Clay Dillow Posted 01.30.2013 at 6:00 pm 12 Comments

Shanghai Sunset This undated photo shows the sun setting over the smoggy Shanghai skyline. The sun hasn't actually hit the horizon there--that's just the smog line. Suicup via Wikimedia

Here’s a publicity stunt that we can unequivocally get behind: Chinese billionaire entrepreneur Chen Guangbiao has released a line of designer canned air in China to offer urban citizens something to breathe besides the fume-choked smog that blankets cities there, a problem particularly visible in Beijing. Guangbiao hopes his canned air will bring more attention to China’s air quality problem and provoke citizens to push the government for change to pollution standards.

Increased pollution standards are something China could certainly benefit from. The Sydney Morning Herald reports concentrations of the smallest and most hazardous airborne particulates have been through the roof in recent days for the second time this month. The EPA’s Air Quality Index cannot even register levels above 500, which are something like 20 times what the World Health Organization deems safe. At the American Embassy in Beijing, the index has been hanging around in the 300-500 “hazardous” range since Friday.

And that’s just this week. Smog has been so bad lately that even China’s tightly controlled national media has been groaning to party leadership about it. NASA satellite images have shown northern China under a thick haze since New Year’s, rendering many cities invisible from space. That’s why Gunagbiao hopes his designer air, which comes in flavors such as “pristine Tibet” (sure to rankle the leadership), “post-industrial Taiwan” (also a hot-button locale, geopolitically speaking), and “revolutionary Yan’an” (that’s the Chinese Communist Party’s historical place of origin).

Another piece of news coming across our desks this morning: China is now burning roughly the same amount of coal as the rest of the world combined. Perhaps the stories are related?

[Sydney Morning Herald]

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12 Comments

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rahduke

from Hicksville, NY

01/30/13 at 6:17 pm

Perri-air anyone? Druidia lives!!

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Robot

01/30/13 at 6:53 pm

Deshavu, Dr. Suess - The Lorax, evil bad guy in the movie sells and profits from selling clean air in bottles.

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zerox012

01/30/13 at 9:16 pm

I can almost hear the Blade Runner theme.

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pioneer10

01/30/13 at 11:40 pm

I'll take a case of "pristine Tibet"- do they deliver in California?

;

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MoBea

01/31/13 at 1:16 am

Perri-Air

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiabeNR_q0U

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RanoOnay

from Salt Lake City, Utah

01/31/13 at 1:01 pm

So they pollute the atmosphere even worse with their "UV blocking" nano particles, and now they give their citizens "clean air" in a can. Riiiiiight.

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RanoOnay

from Salt Lake City, Utah

01/31/13 at 1:02 pm

When I see things like this, the only thing I can think of is the movie Idiocracy, it could happen!

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Cookiees453

01/31/13 at 2:14 pm

China needs some kind of air scrubbers that Coruscant has in the Star Wars universe. Pretty much every single process that happens on the Planet is controlled by technology. If not for the technology, there would be no clean water or air, and pollution and garbage would quickly consume the planet in a matter of hours or days. Coruscant has a population of about 1 trillion give or take a couple billion. I think one day Humanity will have a planet like this, a planet that is run by technology.

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Robot

01/31/13 at 2:23 pm

China idea of population reduction, cough cough.

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Cookiees453

01/31/13 at 3:11 pm

LOL, yes good population control.

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angryjack

01/31/13 at 3:45 pm

angryjack has a wild and crazy idea. since nothing else has been done to address this problem, how about giant windmills inside giant tubes with air filters that suck in dirty air and blows less dirty air out. crazy, i know, but so is sucking on an exhaust pipe of a car, which living there must be like.

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quasi44

02/04/13 at 4:09 pm

If a city like this has a large underground river nearby they could always just create a large earthwork vacuum cleaner, drop the carbon and crud, and get the hydrogen.

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