Health and Toxicity: Increasing Air Quality for City Dwellers

In the 1950s London's thick 'pea-soup' air caused chronic bronchitis, but now 21st century pollution is invisible but just as dangerous. With every deep gulp of air in the city, as a pedestrian, cyclist or even driving through heavy or slow moving traffic, everyone of us consumes alarming amounts of ozone, carbon monoxide, microscopic particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead and an deeply unpleasant cocktail of other pollutants, all of which will reduce our lung function, constricting air passages, upping the asthma risk, unleashing cancer-causing free radicals and increasing the chances of suffering a heart attack.

With the increasing speed of lifestyle the population are becoming unhealthier and therefore more open to further diseases and allergies.

With the increasing amount of vehicles on our roads from an increase in busier lifestyles, personal vehicles are becoming the most popular form of transport. But with the decrease in parking and increase in parking charges, the introduction of the congestion charge to London and the possible introduction to other UK major cities, there is a larger amount of drivers commuting to and from work via motorcycle.

With this in mind there is a large market and potential customer target market for a pollution mask, which will reduce the pollution inhaled by motorcyclists sat in heavy or slow moving traffic within inner cities.

Current products on the market cannot filter out all pollutants, as some cases just removal of odours from exhaust fumes, with these twinned with the problem which arise from standard helmets of visor fogging and increased carbon dioxide build-up, causing re-inhalation of CO2 and hyperventilation in some cases, a niche product could fill the empty gap in the market.

The filtering system should be a mass-market product rather than an installation within a helmet. The product would retails at under £30 based on a production run of 5000 units. The product will be aimed at young to middle aged professionals, who commute to work inner city via mean of a motorcycle, and are concerned of their health and fittest and would like to remove the pollutants from their daily travel.

With technology advancements within filtering systems a High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) Filter would be used to filter out any pollutants from less than 0.3µm in diameter.

The system would then remove the exhaled air away from the mouth removing the possibility re-inhaling the exhaled carbon dioxide and then removing the moisture via a removable moisture control cartridge, and then dispensing the remainder away from the visor, removing the possibility of visor fogging.

The product concurs with all British, European and International safety standards while displaying the correct warning data and information, while considering temperature and service requirements as well as aesthetic, functional, cultural and technological issues.