This is how you ride in a city with toxic air
Pollution is the invisible menace cyclists never stop to thing about. Every time we commute home in rush hour traffic or pedal through a highly congested city we are inhaling a variety of dangerous air pollutants.
The majority of us don’t live in regions where the pollution levels are considered toxic but it’s a serious topic in a city like Beijing, where at one point last month the pollution level measured 40 times the recommended safety levels.
In response, a local artist Matt Hope whipped up a pedal powered ”breathing bike” with a dash of ingenuity and a handful of crap to purify the air as he rides. The rig does produce a claimed 5,000 volts of electricity, so you’ll want to steer clear of the rain.
Comments
it kinda looks like that thing is a fixed gear, so my question is… would it suffocate him if he rode it backwards for a while?
he looks the part for riding in the “danger zone.”
thx, I will never go to capital of toxic China
When you have to go to desperate measures, isn’t that a good reason to leave town.
I don’t know which standards you’re basing the “40 times” number on, but the concentrations were “only” 13.5 times worse than the safe maximum allowed in the US…
Now if you were to take the yearly average concentrations allowed in the US, then they were more like 55 times worse
The pollution gets so bad that mask filters that are supposed to last a week are gone in a couple of hours.
Say what you will about his filtration system, he is really serious about having zero flex in his handlebar.