Grad Student Rigs Cheap Alternative To $1,000 Air Purifiers In Smoggy China 182
An anonymous reader writes "University of Virginia grad student Thomas Talhelm was living in Beijing on a Fulbright Scholarship during the winter of 2012-13, when air pollution was so bad scientists likened it to a nuclear winter. Those who could afford it were resorting to an expensive solution: air filters costing up to $1,000. Talhem built his own on the cheap, getting comparable particulate count results, and has started a company that both markets the product to middle class Chinese and shows others how to DIY."
Re:Very original (Score:5, Insightful)
He got similar results to a $1000 product, and told everybody how to do it.
That is newsworthy.
I suspect there are a lot of people in places with a lot of air pollution who would really like to have this.
Kudos to this guy.
assholes everywhere (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be cheaper for everyone.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be cheaper for everyone to just fix the pollution problem by putting heavy restrictions on emissions. Seriously, $1000 dollar air purifiers to remove the debris put in the air to save $0.05 on scrubbers is stupidity of the highest order. In a lot of cases the scrubbers are already on the factories because Chinese law requires them, just doesn't require that they be in operation. In about a year China could dramatically reduce this pollution to western world levels with simple installing or activating scrubbers on smoke stacks.
This continues to show China is a pay for play game, in that you are well connected enough in the communist party and laws and environmental rules just don't apply and it doesn't matter if it kills the little people.
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost all air purifiers are nothing more than a fan blowing through a filter. Thanks to fans and filters being commodity items, there are many retail HEPA air purifiers on sale for close to this guy's price. The article is little more than a cherry picking fallacy.
Next up: Man rigs cheap alternative to $500 Denon patch cable.
Re:Very original (Score:5, Insightful)
In China? Not really. If you're being conditioned that following the rules is good while thinking for yourself is bad and can even get you in trouble, you eventually end up with a mindset like that.
But don't worry, they're already exporting that success model. We're getting there. And, frankly, when I look around me, how people pay for "services" that hardly qualify as a service because they're too closed minded to even fathom how they could do it themselves for free and at little if any expense and effort, I dare say we're already there.
Re:It would be cheaper for everyone.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This continues to show China is a pay for play game, in that you are well connected enough in the communist party and laws and environmental rules just don't apply and it doesn't matter if it kills the little people.
Lol, yea, they make great capitalists, don't they?
Re:Very original (Score:2, Insightful)
Comparable particle counts HOW? right up against the filter? What about over time? Zero details except you MUST go to his workshop for $33 to find out... Fishy...
I have a rock that keeps tigers away, My most recent tiger count shows zero so it's as good as a $10,000 tiger cage.
Need real data, full information on how the test was done and for how long. Anything else is made up BS or misinformation.
Re:Very original (Score:0, Insightful)
What low IQ dipshit modded this down? Lumpy is right. there is ZERO information backing up the claims.
The internet if full of better designs that use cheaper filters, and some actually have real data.
Lots of people criticize this for its obviousness (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of ideas are obvious once somebody announces what the idea actually is. Honestly, I think that people who would criticize the inventor simply because of the idea's apparent simplicity or obviousness are being rather snobbish, if you ask me.
But hey.... some might find it comforting to think that such values, which might otherwise seem outdated in today's word, are still alive and thriving in our society.