This New Air Mask Really Blows (Filtered Air into Your Lungs)

Breathing masks are a necessity for Beijingers that prefer to avoid a gruesome pollution-induced death at an early age.

However, even the most robust of face coverings are only as good as their fit on your face. If a tight seal cannot be achieved around the contours of your features such as the bridge of your nose, pollutants will merely be drawn into the mask as you breathe.

Those issues are addressed with a new smog-busting product that pumps HEPA-filtered air into your mask so that a fresh supply is delivered directly where it counts: right where you draw your breath. The positive air pressure sent to the mask reduces the chances that you'll be inhaling a lungful of particulate matter.

Dubbed the Mini Lung-Pro, this simple gadget consists of a mask attached to a plastic hose, which feeds into a mini air purifier that can be strapped to the wearer’s arm. A cute little HEPA filter about the size of a deck of cards is contained within, which allegedly is good for 200 to 800 hours of use.
 

Smoggy air is drawn through the device’s filters, which cleanse and then blow it via a fan into the wearer’s mask. The result: particulate matter-reduced air.
 

The device has low, middle and high settings that can be utilized at rest, during exercise or anywhere in between. Its battery lasts for 12 hours on the low setting, and can be charged easily with the supplied cable.

The mask that comes with the Mini Lung-Pro is a standard, papery face covering, but the hose can easily be dislodged and fixed (with a little DIY ingenuity, directions included) onto the mask of your choice.

The filter has a slightly noticeable hum, but even at the high setting it is not distracting. The purifier can easily be popped open, allowing users to remove its filter for easy cleaning.

We did an informal test on the filtration ability in the office today, and found that it worked surprisingly well, reducing particulate matter to an almost imperceptible level.
 

And the process took less than 20 seconds, as you can see in the video below:

The Mini Lung-Pro of course is by no means flawless. For one, it's not too comfy for winter wear, as the stream of air that is pushed into the filter can feel uncomfortably cool as it is blown directly onto the wearer’s face. The RMB 190 price tag puts in may also give customers pause as well, as does the fact that you'll look even more like a space alien than you normally do wearing a mask.

But considering the ease of use and the degree of quality boasted by both the device itself and it effectiveness in filtering the air, the benefits far outweigh the flaws. This is a gadget that offers comfortable, clean breathing at a time when air quality couldn’t be of more concern for Beijingers. So we advise you to strap it on, switch it on, and quit holding your breath for a miracle answer to our city’s pollution problem.

The set itself can be purchased for RMB 190 on Tmall here and a set of 6 replacement mini HEPA filters will set you back RMB 114 here (interfaces are in Chinese only). They are also available in select locations of the Guomei Electronics store (full list in Chinese here), including their shop in the basement of the Solana Mall.

All in all its not a bad little investment – and at RMB 19 for a replacement filter, I'd be inclined to ignore astronomical hourly usage figures and replace the filter every other month (which if you wore it for 2.5 hours daily, would amount to about 150 hours of usage).

Images: Michael Wester