air business

Various entrepreneurs around the world sell cans of clear air to residents of countries that suffer from air pollution. They call themselves "air farmers", but you can think of several other less flattering names that suit them

By Racheli Vox, Angle, Science and Environment News Agency

In the cult film "Spaceballs", a science fiction comedy from 1987 written and directed by Mel Brooks, the heroes arrive on a planet that suffers from a severe lack of air to breathe. In one of the scenes of the film, Brooks, who plays the star's president, is seen pulling out an amusing product from a drawer: a can filled with air, which he inhales with pleasure. The comedy scene from thirty years ago has become in recent years a new economic industry, within the framework of which fresh and fine air is compressed into cans, and sent to places in the world where the air is much more polluted.

Even in reality, the clean air industry started as a joke. At the beginning of 2015, a pair of friends from Canada tried and succeeded in selling as a joke a bag full of air on the eBay auction site, for 99 Canadian cents (about three shekels). The next air bag that the two offered for sale on the site has already received the attention of the media, and at the end of a stormy auction it was sold for no less than 168 Canadian dollars (about NIS 470). The Canadian duo noticed a business potential beyond the jokes, and together they founded the company Vitality Air, which sells cans filled with air collected in the vicinity of the two's residences - Banff National Park in the province of Alberta.

According to the founders of the company, so far over 200 such cans have been sold, mainly to people from areas where air pollution levels are very high, such as China, India, Vietnam, Turkey and Kuwait. In order to purchase a can full of 8 liters of compressed air, which also comes with a mask with which you can breathe the air, you will have to part with 32 Canadian dollars (about NIS 90), not including shipping. There are also 3-liter cans, which are designed to be carried in a bag anywhere. All cans are printed with the date the air was collected, so you can know exactly how fresh it is. The company's website claims that in the future the condition of the air bottles will be the same as that of bottled water, which is normal and common to buy, even though water can also be obtained from the home tap.

Swiss or Australian air?

Following the success of the Canadian company, other companies that harvest and sell air began to appear on the market, and today it is possible to purchase containers from a variety of places around the globe where there is clear and clean air. What do you feel like today? Swiss air? Try the air marketed by a company Swissbreeze. Australian air? try the Clean & Green. New Zealand air? Breathe EZY at your service The new field has already been named Air Farming.

Unfortunately, there are places in the world with very serious air pollution - and these are the markets that the air traders turn to. In New Delhi, the capital of India, air pollution reached a level ten times higher than allowed last November, which prompted the Indian authorities to declare a health emergency. In China, which is the main and sometimes even the sole source of livelihood for clean air companies, people wearing surgical masks on the street against air pollution are a common sight. "People from the educated class in China are leaving the capital, Beijing, because of the pollution, and are moving to other, less polluted places," says Tal Rashef, a business expert for Israeli companies in East Asia. "This worries the authorities in China: Beijing is the center of the government, and the government needs quality personnel."

However, to our delight (and perhaps to the chagrin of the owners of the clean air companies), the situation in China is on an improving trend.

"The Chinese government defined the war against air pollution as a goal already 20-15 years ago," says Rashef. According to him, the steps taken by the government and local authorities include, among other things, the conversion of energy sources that are based on fossil fuels into environmentally friendly energy sources, such as solar energy, setting urban and district pollutant quotas, closing industrial plants, banning the driving of vehicles in city centers, and more. "They have already achieved results," says Rashef, "the pollution in China is still serious and still higher than the maximum allowed in the Western world and in international organizations, but its level is much lower than it was a few years ago."

Of course, air pollution does not stop at the borders of China or India. Israel also has a year About 2,000 deaths which are attributed to air pollution. The main cause of air pollution in Israel is transportation, and other factors include those resulting from human activity, such as emissions from industrial plants and households, as well as natural phenomena, such as dust storms.

Exposure to polluted air is known to be associated with a wide range of health problems: cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, respiratory diseases (such as asthma), disorders in the development of the nervous system, adverse birth outcomes, type 2 diabetes, obesity and cognitive impairment. These effects are particularly serious when it comes to sensitive populations, such as children, pregnant women, patients with chronic diseases and the elderly.

Will help for two breaths

But before you open your wallet, or travel to Safed to collect some air and sell it in Gush Dan or Haifa, the important question arises: does consuming air from cans even help your health? Does this product actually work? Surprisingly or not, the answer is probably no. There are no scientific studies or real evidence that breathing the commercial clean air has a positive effect on health over time.

"I don't see how this product can contribute to health," says Associate Professor Barak Fishbein from the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion. "Maybe it will help for two breaths, but not beyond that, there is no solution here." According to him, unlike drugs, which break down in the body slowly and therefore remain in the body for a certain time, most of the air we breathe leaves the lungs very quickly. "This product does not prevent us from breathing polluted air in the next breath," says Fishbein.

An adult person breathes on average 1,200-700 breaths per hour. Even the large cans of commercial air contain, according to the companies, enough air for only 120-160 breaths. In all other breaths, the consumers inhale into their lungs the polluted air around them, and the clean air remains only a drop in the sea of ​​pollution.

Experts in the field of air pollution emphasize that this is not the solution to the problem of polluted air, and there are even those who believe that such products may provide false hope and make people ignore the existence of the problem.

"If, for example, all the parents in a certain neighborhood decide to take their children to school on foot, the reduction in the air pollution we breathe in that neighborhood will be much more significant than these cans," Fishbein concludes. "The solution is not in products like these, but in regulation, enforcement and changing our behavior."