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Air Quality Apps and Bottled Air Thrive On Beijing's Pollution

Posted by samzenpus on from the one-man's-trash dept.

itwbennett writes "Here's a bright spot in Beijing's off-the-chart bad air pollution: The market for mobile apps that monitor air quality is thriving. 'When the pollution went beyond the air quality index, all the social networks in China and media began paying attention to the problem,' said Wang Jun, one of the developers of the China Air Pollution Index app. 'This caused the downloads to increase 30 times.'" Obviously a Spaceballs fan, a Chinese man is even selling fresh air in cans.

23 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Druish princess by dadelbunts · · Score: 4, Funny

    She got a nose job tho so you cant really tell.

  2. Re:The Lorax? by dadelbunts · · Score: 2

    SPACEBALLS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiabeNR_q0U

  3. Wherever there's a hurricane... by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    there are roofers. Rest assured grasshopper, where there is misery, someone is still reaping a bounty.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Wherever there's a hurricane... by geekoid · · Score: 2

      roofers are fine, much of this stuff is like people selling a magic rock that will keep the next hurricane away.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    2. Re:Wherever there's a hurricane... by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 2

      Wherever there's a hurricane there are roofers.

      You call that a quote? This is a quote:

      Look at all these little things! So busy now! Notice how each one is useful. A lovely ballet ensues, so full of form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them. Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people, who will be able to feed their children tonight, so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny children of their own, and so on and so forth. Thus, adding to the great chain of life. You see, father, by causing a little destruction, I am in fact encouraging life.

  4. Related projects by jago25_98 · · Score: 3, Informative

    One way to measure quality - Sensordone, air quality and other sensors via bluetooth keyring thingy kickstarter project:
    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/453951341/sensordrone-the-6th-sense-of-your-smartphoneand-be

    Related: Air cleaning plants (previously from slashdot)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_air-filtering_plants (testing: http://cur.lv/redirect.php?code=fwrm )

    --
    A blog I run for the wealth
    1. Re:Related projects by Grave · · Score: 2

      And those sensors will largely be made in the same plants in China that are creating this mess, thus feeding back into their own need to exist. Brilliant!

  5. Yanno by Greyfox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here in ermer'ka, we don't have to chew the air because of the EPA. All the deregulation folks trying to close down the EPA should have to spend a month in Beijing, learning what it's like living without one. Just sayin'.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    1. Re:Yanno by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

      And if I had a pony, I would not let you ride it. So there.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    2. Re:Yanno by istartedi · · Score: 4, Informative

      And if oil companies weren't providing you with power, you wouldn't be able to write self-righteous posts on the internet.

      Given that petrolium is about 1% of the fuel for generating electricity in the US there is a good chance that oil companies aren't providing him with any power at all.

      Of course coal is filthy and provides 44.9% of the power; but oil companies are the whipping-boy, so carry on!

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    3. Re:Yanno by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Except for a lot of the reason why there's a lot of pollution in Beijing isn't because there's no EPA, but rather because of the property structure in China. In most countries, if you want to build X, you can build it wherever you can buy the land to build X. In China that isn't the case, all the land belongs to the government and all non-urban land is reserved for farming.

      Because of this, you've got China which has a lot of land and space for people (they're nowhere near the top of the list of population density) where everyone's crammed into cities like sardines if they want to work a non-agricultural job. And since the government owns the land, businesses can't move out of the cities. Because of this you've got a massive amount of smog because all the businesses are concentrated in such a small area.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    4. Re:Yanno by moondawg14 · · Score: 5, Interesting
      As is very often the case with China, the issue is much more complex than that. China does have emissions regulations, but the selectively enforce them. Most Chinese companies don't have the technology to create compliant products(automobiles and trucks, in this case) Nor do consumers have the money to purchase compliant products. So, rather than spend $$$$ on developing compliant products, companies will spend $$ to get the right person to sign off on their non-compliant product. This has a double-benefit of making Chinese products MUCH cheaper than foreign products (most foreign companies will not make a non-compliant product) and putting more Chinese manufacturing workers to work.

      Here in China, we use 80/20 as a rule of thumb: 80% of the products in a given market will be "fake." In my case, we find that about 80% of the competitors in the engine markets are selling non-compliant engines. One example: One of our competitors was selling an aftertreatment "catalyst" at retail for less than our material cost. So, we bought one and cut it open. Iron. No platinum or other catalysts. Well, pretty hard to compete on price when the other guy doesn't have to follow the rules.

      After living here for a year, I can tell you that "Money is King" in China. Nearly every single person is constantly on the hunt for where they're going to get their next infusion of cash. Putting enough money in the right hands can get you nearly anything, ANYTHING that you want. Until that cycle is somehow broken, China is going to continue to run headlong into the future with little concern for the long-term well-being of its environment and citizens.

    5. Re:Yanno by Rich0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Maybe, but Japan looks exactly the same and they don't have the same legal structure. I think it is a culture thing.

      The lack of regulation issue is real. In the US the average person uses oil or gas to heat their home, and both are reasonably clean from an emissions standpoint (I'm guessing the fuels are regulated). In China most homes use this compressed coal dust stuff for fuel and it is sooty as all get out, likely inefficient, but also dirt cheap.

    6. Re:Yanno by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      It's spelled "xmerica".

      In no way does the pollution in Beijing excuse the environmental extremists in the EPA. So, there are only two options, with no in between? Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    7. Re:Yanno by guises · · Score: 4, Informative

      China has plenty of small villages, that's where most of the population lives. That isn't the reason for the smog, it's the power plants. What you're implying is that cities are necessarily dirty and that's just not the case. Plenty of people in New York and the air is perfectly breathable. Shanghai recently spent a lot on setting up filtration for its coal-fire power plants and the air quality improved a fair amount. Still has a long way to go, but that's clearly where the problem is.

    8. Re:Yanno by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Odd. It's pretty much the same in my country, just settling where you wanna simply isn't (you pretty much need a building permit for ... well, I'm not sure about your dog house, but...) but we have one of the cleanest cities. Seriously, when I went to L.A. I was surprised you can breathe that stuff they claim is "air".

      Trust me. It's pollution standards.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Idiotic... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    Obviously, selling bottled air is a 'good idea' if you can get people to buy it; but what possible sense does that make as a strategy for coping with pollution?

    As a glance at the scuba gear aisle shows, the equipment needed to actually bottle useful amounts of air isn't trivial. You need a fairly sturdy(and thus heavy) tank to safely achieve pressures high enough to avoid ridiculous volume requirements, and then you need a regulator stage so the pressure doesn't blow your alveoli to hell.

    Unless the pollutants are some truly alarming stuff, rather than just soot and miscellaneous VOCs, you'll get a lot more mileage out of lighter and less bulky filters.

    1. Re:Idiotic... by mister_playboy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Obviously, selling bottled air is a 'good idea' if you can get people to buy it; but what possible sense does that make as a strategy for coping with pollution?

      The canned fresh air is a bit of dark humor. The guy selling it is a wealthy philanthropist making a political statement.

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    2. Re:Idiotic... by pushing-robot · · Score: 3, Informative

      And with 'flavors' like "pristine Tibet" and "post-industrial Taiwan", perhaps slightly subversive humor as well.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    3. Re:Idiotic... by Rich0 · · Score: 2

      I know that Pharma companies spend a lot more money making their pills look shiny white for sale in Japan. Apparently whether it works isn't nearly as important as the aesthetics of the pills - just about everybody in Japan takes pills and they're quite fussy about how they look. I know somebody at a Pharma company that had to spend a bunch of money on color analysis equipment. In the US the quality test was basically that it looked white and didn't have obvious visual defects (chips, flecks, etc) - they cared far more about the chemical purity and how it dissolved which is far more important from the standpoint of how the pill interacts with the body. For Japan the specs were incredibly tight as to exactly what shade of white the pill was.

  7. selling bottled air? by dudpixel · · Score: 2

    Time to pay a visit to the once-ler...

    --
    This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
  8. As someone living in China by Glorat · · Score: 2

    My new bookmarked website is http://www.aqicn.info/ which recently popped up. It's very pretty and they built a little widget that goes on my android phone home screen. I'm grateful people have taken time to build this type of information as I've been paranoid about the pollution whilst living here. Only 2 years ago, pollution was a topic not even discussed by the locals and the best one had to go on was a twitter feed from the US consulate giving the PM2.5 levels.

    And the best thing is that people are building these sites and apps for free.

  9. Original Environmental Action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Before 'Green' became a marketing word, the original environmental action in the sixties was to clean up the air, the land and the water in the Western World. The pollution back then was obscene. Black smoke poured out of factories. Lake Erie was the synonym for 'really polluted.

    Burning Coal emits Mercury, Thorium and Sulfur. Mercury gets concentrated in the Fish. Sulfur falls out as acid rain.

    As to the Thorium, I spotted this in an web article, but could not find much out more about it and was not entirely satisfied that the information was 100 percent good. But here goes anyways. Coal contains Thorium and other radioactive materials that are released into the air when it is burnt. They do not purify coal before the burn it. Coal is a mixture of all sorts of stuff, most of flammable, but some of it other stuff. The scaremonger writing the piece claimed that coal plants spewed more radiactivity into the environment than a nuclear plant. Who knows for sure. I could not google enough up.

    They quietly shutdown all the coal plants around here. Almost like Shhh, don't say 'Thorium' or 'Class Action'. Sorta like they got rid of Leaded Gasoline, which according to the talk around the campfire is the reason for the long, slow, steady reduction in crime.

    As somewhat of a gearhead, there was always a lot of harangue about 'California' emission controls. I thought they were being overly anal. But looking at the air quality in Bejing is the universe telling me, Ahah! That what happens if you are not anal about everything that affects air quality.

    I hear about the Chinese Economic Miracle. But when I see the youtube videos of the 'Fog' in Bejing, the price they paid was too high. You could be the richest man in Bejing, but your quality of life, as a living creature, is horrible. This is not some abstract human rights issue. This is breathing filth into your lungs with every breath.

    And replace the coal plants with what? Nuclear? Oy. Brain Hurts.

    But still, the Chinese must start down the road to clean air and clean water with a single step. They have the world's worst problem and must become world leaders at solving this problem.

    The population is the largest in the world. The civilization is thousands of years old. They have cared for their environment all this time, and in turn, their environment has cared for them.

    There are almost tears on my keyboard. It is all so sad. I pray for the people of Beijing. I did not know the problem was so bad, but now I do. I write. I talk. I send about links. That is about all I can do.

    China, take those trillions of Worthless Fiat American Paper Dollars and buy your civilization clean air. The people of China are the most important asset of China. There is no election coming up. The planet is not going anywhere. There is no need for short term, quick buck expedient thinking.

    Oh. It is just so sad. I pray for Beijing.