New Pollution PSA Exposes the Hairy Side of Prolonged Exposure to a High AQI

In what’s oddly the most creative pollution-related public service announcement we’ve seen in some time, here is a video (English-subtitled versions on Youku and on Facebook) depicting how Chinese people might change through years of continuous exposure to pollution.

No, it’s not lung cancer or obesity, but overly long and stylized nose hair that we will start seeing on Chinese young and old, male and female, to help filter the PM2.5 matter from the air before it reaches the lungs. Evolution at its hairiest. 

The video begins with a short montage showing a shampoo commercial with the model tossing her nasal locks into the air in slow motion, and then followed by a variety of other scenes of daily life like dancing grannies with long nose hair, and a woman using her nose hair as a jump rope while the voice-over states “In this age of pollution, the survivors have grown accustomed to this world.”

It concludes with “If you don’t change air pollution, it will change you instead,” followed by a man on a bike riding away into blue skies. We guess if everyone just used bikes instead of fossil fuel powered automobiles then there would be nothing to worry about (not).

The PSA was produced by the charity WildAid in hopes of not only raising awareness about particle matter and toxins being released into the air through coal-fueled power stations and transport exhaust fumes but to also promote action through living a more eco-conscious lifestyle. Maybe their next video could shame the hoards of litter bugs we often encounter on our daily commute to the office.

Speaking of pollution, China is well known for being the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet, and that has led many a locally-based entrepreneur to look for solutions to keep people informed and safe in times when AQI levels spike considerably.

One example is the Laser Egg, made by Origins Technology, a small Beijing-based company building cheap air quality monitors.

They sold out of their product at the end of 2015 when pollution levels shot way above average, and are now producing their product on an even larger scale, to the point where you can now as of this week, find them at Apple retail stores in major cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou).

This is great news for those of us concerned with bad air, particularly this week and we are now in the middle of one of the worst spells of bad air to hit the capital this calendar year.

So far this year Beijing has seen noticeable improvements in terms of air quality (30 percent better than this time last year, as of mid-February), but on the downside, it sucks now because the air's been over AQI 150 two days now and forecasts indicate it's likely to continue to be yucky through Friday:

Which is odd, as usually Beiijng pulls out all the stops to clean the air whenever there's a big meeting in town, and Beijing is currently hosting the annual "Two Meetings" of all the grand poo-bahs from the nation over.

Images: WildAid, Origins Technology, aqcast.com