Bangkok-based Lightfog Creative and Design has developed a protype bicycle that purifies air and sends out oxygen. (Photo: Lightfog / Rhonda J. Miller) Riding through city traffic on a bicycle will no longer be a fume-breathing, smog-inhaling threat to physical and mental health when the prototype Air-Purifier bike, by Bangkok-based Lightfog, is produced and gets on the road.Even though the pollution-eating bicycle is not yet available, Lightfog has already won a Red Dot Award for Design Concept 2014, and the bicycle is posted in an online exhibition. The award for the Air-Purifier Bike design went to the company, Lightfog Creative and Design Co., Ltd., and to designers Silawat Virakul, Torsakul Kosaikul, Suvaroj Poosrivongvanid.Like Us on Facebook Lightfog Creative Director Silawat Virakul told Fast Co. Design he wanted to "add more value to a bicycle by adding its ability to reduce the pollution," The Huffington Post reported. The design, however, shows the air filter to be rather small, putting into question how much air would be processed during a ride or how much oxygen could be produced, TreeHugger noted.

The Air-Puriifier Bike is one more product offering to cut back on emissions of automobile and truck pollutants, which include hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon dioxide. A medium-sized car uses 124 gallons of gasoline and causes an emissions of 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide. When it comes to an SUV on that same yearly commute, the vehicle uses 170 gallons of gas with emissions of 1.9 tons of carbon dioxide. , a website that focuses on responding to climate change. Transportation produces 30 percent of all U.S. global warming emissions, including more than one-third of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Passenger cars and light trucks create the lion's share of U.S. transportation emissions, and collectively produce more than one-fifth of the nation's total global warming pollution. The remaining transportation emissions come from medium and heavy-duty vehicles, primarily freight trucks and buses, as well as aircraft, shipping, rail, and military uses.

Every gallon of gas burned emits nearly 25 lbs. of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases into the atmosphere. About 5 lbs. of that comes from the extraction of petroleum, and the production and delivery of the fuel. The bulk of heat-trapping emissions — more than 19 lbs. per gallon — comes out of a car's tailpipe, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. jual sharp air purifier kaskusEach year, the average car sends seven tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.airbrush cleaning station potGale Virtual Reference Libraryhoffman air purifier Log in to access Gale Virtual Reference Library The study found that the air inside buses with the new system was as clean as air near the beach in Santa Monica.

An on-board air filtration system developed specifically for school buses reduces exposure to vehicular pollutants by up to 88 percent, according to a study by researchers at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. The high-efficiency cabin air, or HECA, system could help protect the 25 million American children who commute on school buses nearly every day. Children are more susceptible to air pollution than adults because they breathe more quickly and their immune and cardiovascular systems are still developing, said Yifang Zhu, the study’s senior author and an associate professor in the department of environmental health sciences. Pollution reduction was even greater under freeway driving conditions, which was surprising because freeways have particularly high pollutant concentrations due to traffic congestion and increased emissions. The study found that the air inside buses with the HECA system was as clean as air near the beach in Santa Monica, California. The study appears today in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology.

“During school bus commuting, children can be exposed to significantly greater levels of air pollutants than a typical resident in the South Coast air basin,” Zhu said. The South Coast air basin encompasses all of Orange County, California, and the non-desert regions of Los Angeles County, Riverside County, and San Bernardino County. “Studies have shown that exposure to high levels of vehicle pollution is associated with pulmonary and cardiovascular health risks, including oxidative stress, mitochondrial damage and acute pulmonary inflammation,” she said. Studies have also found that children exposed to pollutants from vehicles tend to perform less well in school. The new study tested six school buses without children on board while the buses were still, and while they were driving on freeways and major arterial roadways in Los Angeles. Researchers tested the air both inside and outside of the buses for vehicle-emitted particulate matter, including black carbon and fine and ultrafine particles, down to a few nanometers in size.

A study funded by the California Air Resources Board more than a decade ago was the first to find serious air quality problems inside diesel-powered school buses. That study led to efforts to retrofit school buses with exterior pollution-reducing devices. While that method is promising for minimizing emissions from buses’ tailpipes, it doesn’t always provide cleaner air inside the buses. A majority of school buses today are not equipped with any interior mechanical filtration systems, said Eon Lee, the study’s first author and a postdoctoral researcher in Zhu’s lab. A previous study by Zhu and her team found that commercially available household air purifiers can reduce pollutant levels inside school buses by about 50 percent. However, they are not designed to work in moving vehicles. As part of the new study, researchers developed a prototype on-board HECA filtration system for buses and installed two in the rear of each of the six buses tested. Air was drawn in through diffusers on the sides of each unit and fed through the HECA filter.