Canned Air: A fad or the future?

By Zhang Xinyuan Source:Global Times Published: 2015-2-10 18:43:01

Experts debate quality of perceived smog solution


Most retail canned air doesn't contain the negatively charged ions that experts say are good for your health. Photo: Li Hao/GT

When 25-year-old Zheng Xiaoxu climbed Mt. Fuji in January last year, she enjoyed the fresh air so much that she wanted to bring some of it back to her parents in Beijing.

"My father has chronic bronchitis, so whenever the smog shrouds the city, it causes him to cough," Zheng said. "If he can enjoy the clean air in Mt. Fuji everyday, I am sure he wouldn't cough so much."

Zheng, who is attending graduate school in Japan, spent around $120 on two cans of fresh air from Mt. Fuji, which local sellers promised would let tourists have a whiff of Mt. Fuji anywhere in the world. "I plan to give them to my parents for Spring Festival," Zheng said.

Japan is not the only place that is selling canned air. In August 2012, Chinese high-profile philanthropist Chen Guangbiao created canned fresh air collected from Anhui Province and Taiwan.

In 2014, several provinces that boasted clean air, including Zhejiang and Guizhou, unveiled their canned fresh air to free people living in big cities from inhaling air with off-the-chart PM 2.5 levels.

But do the experts really buy it?

Liu Zeying, a doctor at Beijing Anzhen Hospital's department of respiratory medicine said she thinks the canned fresh air is more of a stunt to attract the public's attention to environmental protection or tourism than something that actually has any positive influence on people's health.

"With each breath, we take in 500 milliliters of air, and we breathe 16 to 18 times every minute on average. This means we need around 9,000 milliliters of air every minute," Liu said.

Yet, a search for canned fresh air on taobao.com, the biggest e-commerce website in China, produces mainly products that contain only around 100 milliliters of air. Only one manufacturer, a group from Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, has boasted plans to liquefy their air to provide customers with 30 minutes of fresh air, according to a Jiangnan Times report published in March 2014.

"That's not nearly enough, since the air around us is still polluted," Liu said. "I don't think that a jar of fresh air would have any use other than psychological reassurance. "Air purifiers and pollution masks are more effective. Or you can just get an oxygen tank since the oxygen level is lower on a smoggy day due to the low air pressure."

The fresh air's quality is also influenced after being stored in a can, according to Xie Shaodong, Associate Dean of Peking University's College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering.

"The cans need to be absolutely light and air proof, and the surface needs to be very smooth, so that the oxygen and, most importantly, negatively charged ions can remain in the cans," Xie said. "The ions can easily be absorbed into the surface of the can and disappear if the surface is not smooth enough."

Negatively charged ions are found in nature, and many air purifiers use an air ionizer to freshen the air, giving users the 'breath of fresh air' feeling that one gets when standing next to a waterfall. They are linked with improving mental health by relieving stress and helping people sleep, Xie said.

Xie said the cans that meet the standard for maintaining good air quality with negatively charged ions can cost up to $640 for a volume of 30 milliliters. But a 100 milliliter can of fresh air on Taobao is sold for around $6.

"It means that canned fresh air may only contain a little more oxygen and fewer PM 2.5 particles than the air around us," Xie said. "And unless people can carry around 13.6 kilograms' air [which is how much a person needs to breath in a day], this doesn't make any sense."

However, Kong Bangjie, a professor from Zhengjiang Agricultural and Forestry University said that although the negatively charged ions are hard to maintain, the canned fresh air will have phytoncidere, a germ-killing substance emitted by plants, if the air is collected from the forest.

"The phytoncidere plants give off is good for people's health. It can improve people's immune functions and metabolism," Kong said in an interview with China Economic Weekly in April 2014.

Zheng said that if one day, there was actually canned air that could last for several hours for an acceptable price and there was a national standard for regulating the quality of canned air, she would purchase some for her parents.

"For now, I still trust regular methods for fighting against smog, such as an air purifier," Zheng said. "The canned fresh air I bought was just a creative expression of my affection for my parents."

Posted in: Metro Beijing

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