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  • 2017-01-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Are Chinese People Selling Each Other Bags of Fresh Air? (en)
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  • It may have started as a joke in the Mel Brooks satire Spaceballs, but in February 2016 various publications began reporting that bottles of fresh air were being sold to Chinese customers seeking relief from persistent air pollution in major cities such as Beijing. As countries such as China and India have developed industrially, they have also developed major smog problems. In December 2016, the New York Times reported that Beijing officials sparked controversy when they listed smog as a natural disaster: Moses Lam, a Canadian entrepreneur, saw an unlikely product opportunity in this phenomenon: pristine Canadian Rockies air. Lam said his canned air business is booming: Now Lam's company, Vitality Air, sells thousands of cans of fresh air collected from Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. He has customers in China, India and South Korea, with a developing market in Vietnam. On 3 January 2017, the Chinese government announced that 24 cities were on red alert for smog, with red being the most serious level for alerts in China's four-tiered public warning system. Lam said that during the winter months, pollution gets worse because Chinese citizens are heating their homes and burning coal, which adds to pollution produced by coal-burning factories: Lam said he's seen photographs of Chinese people selling each other inflated bags of air, but that's not where he got the idea. Vitality, which incorporated in 2015, has a 24-foot trailer and 14,000 pounds of equipment (including a giant vacuum device) which Lam uses when he drives from Edmonton to Banff and collects 200,000 liters of air over about a 40-hour period. The air is compressed into containers that double as face masks, allowing customers to experience the smell and quality of Rocky Mountain air for about 160 breaths: Lam's idea has caught on. Leo De Watts and his company, AethAer, sell empty-looking jars for £80 (nearly $100 U.S.) ... but the emptiness is in the eye of the beholder. According to the company's web site, the jars contain air from pristine parts of Great Britain, including Dorset, Yorkshire and Somerset: A video shows De Watts standing in a gusty English meadow with a woman appearing to catch air in a large bag behind him: The British newspaper The Independent notes that such products may be bought by consumers more as novelty or collector's items than as practical sources of clean air: Reuters reported that a millionaire Chinese philanthropist handed out cans of fresh air as a stunt to make a political point abut the environment: Vitality Air's head said the pollution problem in China is so pervasive he doesn't believe will be corrected any time soon, and he acknowledged how serious it is — after a trip to China, he reported, he coughed for three weeks upon returning home to Edmonton. (en)
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