There is no escape from the air you breathe. Or is there? Last year 169 places across the UK registered illegal levels of air pollution, according to Greenpeace. Londoners, in particular, should be waking up to the toxins they inhale, with pollution levels in the capital breaching annual legal limits in the first five days of this year.
When a problem arises, however, a nimble entrepreneur will spot an opportunity. Demand is growing for products that could reduce our exposure to air pollution, evidence suggests. Among Chinese consumers, 55% say they want to learn how to protect themselves from the harmful health effects of pollution, while London mayor Sadiq Khan has committed to a range of programmes to raise awareness of air quality and announced a £10 levy for older, polluting cars to drive within the London congestion zone from October.
Businessman Lord Paul Drayson is attuned to the issue for personal reasons. “I’ve had asthma since I was a child, and four of my children have asthma,” he says. Drayson is a former science minister and CEO of Drayson Technologies, which brought the Clean Space sensor to market two years ago.
Drayson explains that the Clean Space “tag” sits on a smartphone and continuously measures levels of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. Each tag feeds back local pollution readings to a centralised point. This information is then merged with data from other sources to create a map of how pollution hotspots emerge and evolve over time.
The Clean Space tag is available for £49.99, so is not cost prohibitive, if not altogether cheap. So far, thousands of units have been sold around the world. The company now has 200m data points to draw on and the mapping information is becoming increasingly detailed.
Drayson says the immediate benefit of his product is that people – those particularly interested include individuals with a health condition, who exercise outside or with young families – can learn more about pollution spikes in their neighbourhoods and physically avoid those areas. Though he doesn’t see his company as a campaigning organisation, he does describe the technology as “providing people who are engaged in lobbying [against air pollution] with the best possible information”.
Market analysts IDTechEx see promise in emissions prevention technology, which is being developed to bring vehicles that run off non-carbon-based fuel to market. “A Chinese car manufacturer recently launched a carbon-independent vehicle covered in solar panels,” says David Pugh, an IDTechEx technology analyst. “There’s a lot of growth potential in this area, though [that growth] is probably 10 years away.”
As with all new technology, however, alternatives to carbon-powered vehicles are expensive. “I think it’ll really start with governments: Birmingham now has electric buses, San Francisco has a full electric bus fleet.”
However, Pugh adds that IDTechEx is predicting the market for air quality sensors alone will rise to $3bn (£2.5bn) by 2027. He notes growth in Europe and China – in the latter, a growing middle class is making a big investment.
Meanwhile, house ventilation systems are now being developed in increasingly sophisticated form by partnerships such as that between tech company Netatmo and Velux: sensors can automatically open and close windows depending on pollution levels outside and inside the house.
Cambridge Mask Company offers a way of filtering the air you breathe when outside the home. Founded by Christopher Dobbing, it grew out of his experience of working in China as an education consultant. Suffering from respiratory problems was commonplace among his young students: “Many of them were carrying inhalers. When children drew pictures of the sky they coloured it in grey, instead of blue.”
Dobbing’s interest in reducing pollution exposure grew and in 2013 he became the China director for Vogmask, an American brand of pollution mask. Then, in 2015, he moved back to the UK and set up his own venture in the same field.
Cambridge Mask Company’s USP is that its masks include a filtering technology developed by the UK ministry of defence. Dobbing says these masks don’t just filter particulate-based pollution – the kind that is responsible for smog – but that they also filter virus-spreading pathogens and the colourless pollution that tends to come from petrol vehicles.
While China accounts for the majority of the company’s business, UK sales have seen an uptick of late. Dobbing attributes this, in part, to wider media coverage of pollution and the problems it causes. Press interest led to a 250% increase in Cambridge Mask Company’s website traffic in January, which boosted sales.
While traffic has now fallen back to usual levels, the company has seen a strong year-on-year growth in the UK. “Inventions to reduce pollution exposure have a rapidly growing market, but are also in a competitive marketplace,” Dobbing adds.
According to Dr David Green, an environmental scientist at King’s College London, the best way of reducing high concentrations of particles and gases is to stop them getting into the atmosphere in the first place. He is sceptical of some inventions purported to clean polluted air such as titanium oxide “paint” coatings intended for exterior walls, which are said to catalyse, and so reduce, the amount of nitrogen dioxide in the air. “There is no strong evidence that they work,” he says.
A chemist by background, Green is more positive about a new nitrogen “scrubbing” technology created by London-based company Airlabs. Sophie Power, Airlab’s co-founder and CEO, explains that the company – which has been working on the tech for a couple of years – is looking to launch a UK pilot project later this year to monitor air pollution at bus stops. Last year, Power and her team tested their tech, which works by neutralising nitrogen dioxide as well as filtering other pollutants such as particulate matter, on Marylebone Road in London. They saw positive results.
Cleaning polluted air is fairly new; where did Airlab’s idea from? “We were very frustrated that emissions weren’t going down and [wanted to] find ways that action could be taken,” says Power.
Since then, the company has been trying to gather interest. “We are trying to raise awareness so that we can create public pressure to start a pilot project in London. We’ve offered it to TFL for free; it’s really hard to gauge traction.” If Airlabs can’t gain a UK base for the tech, Power says it will move on to the Chinese market.
A recent survey from Friends of the Earth showed that although two-thirds of respondents were concerned about air pollution, only one in 10 thought the air they breathe is bad. However, Power does think awareness of the risks of pollution exposure is growing. “People in general are more aware, even talking to my friends – they thought I was crazy [in what I was doing with Airlabs] two years ago – now they say they understand.”
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