Air Quality Cam

Hi, we are Kirk and Frank. We will be your hosts here at Clean Air Apartment over the next few weeks as we work on Operation Clean Air in Beijing. Operation Clean Air is a radical and innovative attempt to use ultra-high efficiency air cleaning to create a performance advantage for US athletes at the Beijing 2008 Olympic games. Needless to say, for a couple air cleaning geeks like us – this is a very exciting project. No one has ever tried to comprehensively use air cleaning to gain an “edge” for an entire team before at a major athletic event.

Everyone, it seems, has been holding their breath when it comes to what Beijing would serve up in terms of air quality for the Olympics. Could a government that can literally move mountains be able to eradicate air pollution at least during the Olympics? Or would Beijing’s infamous haze devastate athlete performance?

As we were packing our bags for our third trip to Beijing, we were wondering how Beijing air would compare to Los Angeles, with just one week to go. Rather than having to rely on government figures, we had the luxury of using our very own airborne particle measuring equipment for an interesting snapshot comparison of LA and Beijing air. Outside our Santa Fe Springs office, our measurements showed about 3.5 million particles per cubic foot (pcf) on Thursday afternoon. When we got off the plane in Beijing about 20 hours later, blue skies and a particle count of only 2.5 million pcf greeted us. Beijing beats LA. At least today.

In the past we have gotten much higher readings in Beijing. Average days seemed to be running as high as 40 million, and many days touched at 60 to 70 million. This is very bad air quality, often more then 40 times worse than Los Angeles. Shutting down factories and taking cars off roads may have a small short term affect on the air quality, but what really gives Beijing (or any city) sudden improvement in air quality is weather conditions. You can have a reading of 2.5 million one day and 55 million the very next day. It isn’t that Beijing opened up all the factories over night and told everyone to get out on the road and rev their engines. It’s simply that certain weather conditions can put a virtual glass dome over the city and others help to dissipate air pollutants.

But our main concern with Clean Air Apartment isn’t going to be these outdoor air quality readings. We are going to be looking at how much we can improve our indoor air. (The outdoor readings will be base measurements for comparisons.) For many years we have worked with hospitals to provide air cleaning protection to patients and caregivers to remove airborne particulates like SARS, MRSA, and tuberculosis, and we have worked with severe allergy and asthma sufferers to change their lives by creating indoor environments that comprehensively remove the environmental irritants that are making them sick. The problem is, though, that way too many people don’t know that revolutionary advances have been made in air cleaning in recent years. All to often, people are lured in by ineffective air purifiers advertised with hundred million dollar budgets. Frank and I get out of bed each morning to try to educate people about the benefits of advanced air purification. With Clean Air Apartment we hope to show just how effective ultra-high efficiency air cleaning can be in removing the many environmental irritants that can affect people’s health. We don’t say it lightly when we say this is a revolutionary science. Until just a few years ago the type of environments we are creating were not possible outside of multi-million dollar clean rooms or hospital surgical suites. Now they are possible for any home in the world. We believe this new science is going to change the world when it comes to the treatment of allergies, asthma, and other respiratory conditions.

While we are here for Clean Air Apartment, we invite doctors, scientists and families to contact us with their questions. Obviously, our ability to answer emails is going to be limited by how many questions we get and how fast we can type, but if we can improve one person’s life with our time here in Beijing at Clean Air Apartment – this unique experiment will have been worthwhile.