Urban dwellers are no strangers to pollution, especially with respiratory issues caused by suspended particles and noxious gases from industrial and automotive-based pollutants. To counter this, many resort to wearing masks and even investing in air filters for their homes and offices.
This company takes it one step further--Aerochromics has created shirts that actually respond to specific types of airborne pollution. They have created three variants that each indicate unnaturally high levels of carbon monoxide, particulate pollution and radioactivity.
The shirts basically have tiny sensors on the front and rear, designed to react to such pollutants. For example when a high level of particulate pollution is detected, the sensors activate heat pads that change white dots on the shirt to black. In the carbon monoxide version, the reaction is chemically-triggered where the shirt’s dye changes its black stripes white.
However the idea, though novel, doesn’t really deal with the issue in its entirety--when pollution is detected, there’s nothing proactive the shirt does apart from warning the wearer that they have entered a potentially unsafe environment. That said, these shirts started off as an art project of the company’s founder Nikolas Bentel.
"Knowing if an urban area is safe should be public knowledge," he said. "The shirt completely changing colors allows people around the user to also be aware of their surroundings."
But the real issue is the price of each of the shirts--at $500 apiece (approximately Rs 33,505,) it’s certainly not a mass market product. Although in time if technology and economies of scale play into the effort, it could be an interesting example of wearable technology being put to practical use. A possible scenario could be hundreds or thousands of people wearing these shirts that work transparently as a swarm to detect city-wide levels of pollution, automatically alerting authorities of potential hazards.
Watch the technology in action here:
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 "Aerochromics air pollution sensing shirt")
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