Goska and Hervé from Europe to Asia on a bike

After a year long eco expedition on bicycle across Europe and Asia covering 16,000km, Goska and Hervé of Dévélotour Asia released a DVD documenting the trip and their findings regarding environmental issues along the journey. From 1:05 to 1:38 in the clip below you will see why they need a pollution mask and how Totobobo has been used during their trip.

Collecting the used filters for every 6 hours of use, they have developed an innovative way to illustrate the severeness of the air pollution of the area they travel through.

Pollution mask filters before, inside and after Beijing, each one after 6 hours of pedalling

Half way during their trip across India, Goska wrote to us and said: “The TOTOBOBO anti-pollution masks came in very useful in India! We’ve tested the masks in Delhi, the Indian countryside and Calcutta – used one filter for a day’s cycling in each place – and we got varying shades of brown….even far from cities and factories the air is very polluted.”

Goska and Hervé share their journey through exhibition and a called film “Develotour Asia”. They have recently screen the film in lycée Jean Cocteau and received lots of enthusiastic feedback from the students. You can purchase the film (DVD) from their site (http://develotour.fr/) at 15 Euro.

The design of the strap of Totobobo mask has since been refined to make it easier to use and adjusted, even though the design of Totobobo mask and the filters remains largely the same. A new version call SuperCool has been developed specially for cyclist and outdoor sports.

Related:
What are cyclist looking for in a pollution mask?

Totobobo new SuperCool mask for cyclist sucks?

Protect your lungs when riding in the city

More advanced features of TOTOBOBO mask

How to customize TOTOBOBO mask to fit your face?

12 useful features for cyclist

How to clean TOTOBOBO mask for reuse?

Buy TOTOBOBO mask

ATLANTA — Pregnant women are often paranoid about their pregnancies. Now a study released this week gives them something else to watch out for.

That study linked pregnant women’s exposure to smog and air pollution to lower IQ in their babies. How concerned pregnant women should be?

Mary Hadley Ozburn is 36 weeks pregnant with her third child — her second boy. Both she and the baby are ready.

“You wanted this baby out since, what, 32 weeks?, asked her OB/GYN Dr. Michael Randell.

“Yeah!” she confirmed.

As anxious as they both may be, they will not be received into an entirely welcoming environment.

“The study’s interesting,” said Dr. Randell. “I think it supports other data that has come out showing that pollution can affect developing fetuses.”

There’s a growing number of studies that link exposure to smog in pregnant women and slowed development in their babies.

“Sure it makes sensen” Dr. Randell said. “Pollutants are brought in through the lungs. From the lungs it goes to the bloodstream…cross the placenta. And then the baby’s exposed to it.”

Mary Hadley Ozburn has heard about this study. She’s concerned — a bit.

“I might take a few more precautions being pregnant”, she said, “but certainly I wouldn’t change a lot about the way I live my life.”

For Randell, this study is one more item to add to the list of things to watch out for.

“If,” Randell said, “you are in an environment where you are near a lot of exhaust from automobiles for example, that’s something that you’d probably want to change, while you’re pregnant.”

Randell would not advise a pregnant woman to wear a surgical mask when outside. He says there is no evidence that a surgical mask is effective in blocking smog from entering the lungs.

This particular study did not have the rigorous controls that some do. Still, in concert with other studies, doctor Randell says it’s at least worth doctors and their patients talking about it.

Maybe after that conversation Mary Hadley Ozburn’s baby wouldn’t be quite so anxious.

Related reading:
Kids’ Lower IQ Scores Linked to Prenatal Pollution

“I’m a Product Design student in New Zealand and I’m currently looking into the issue of Respiratory Safety for exercising outdoors in Urban areas. To find a solution I need to find out as much as possible from those of you who feel affected/concerned by the issue. I will be designing a system or product that hopefully appeals to users and improves respiratory safety and performance but I need to know your thoughts/wants/needs/don’t wants in a product!! If you’ve got a bit of time it would be great if you could answer the following survey to help my research along! ”

Erika Hansen testing a respirator running

Erika Hansen, a Industrial design student from New Zealand posted a survey regarding respiratory protection in outdoor sports to many cycling forums like Melbourne Cyclist , Bike Radar, Vorb and others. Her questionnaire must have traveled around the world multiple loops and helped her uncovered many useful insights.

I was curious and asked Erika if she would mind sharing her research. Erika is very kind and forwarded her research synopsis to share with all.

Erika Hansen-research synopsis

The measured mean tropospheric NO2 for 2008 as measured with the satellite instrument SCIAMACHY. Hotspots on these world map are the industrialised area in Europe, China, the USA and South-Africa. A lot of other mega-cities can also be found as a localised spot with enhanced NO2 concentrations.

This is a guest post by Rosalind Dall.
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Purdue college researchers demonstrate us one great route to lower 50% of winter heating bills

Frederick Welck, at left, an intern from Institut für Technische Chemie in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany, and mechanical engineering doctoral student Christian Bach work with an experimental setup for testing valves as part of research led by Purdue University to develop more efficient heat pumps.

Researchers at Purdue University are working on a new research project that promises the opportunity to reduce heating bill by 50 percent for those who live in very cold climates. The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, builds on previous work that began about 5 years ago at Purdue’s Ray W. Herrick Laboratories.

Heat pumps provide heating in winter and cooling in summer but are not efficient in extreme cold climates. The analysis involves changes to the way heat pumps operate to make them more effective in extreme cold temperatures.

The revolutionary technology works by modifying the standard vapor-compression cycle behind standard air-con and refrigeration.

The typical vapor-compression cycle has four stages:
1° Refrigerant is compressed as a vapor
2° Condenses into a liquid
3° Expands to a mixture of liquid and vapor
4° Then evaporates

The project will investigate two cooling approaches during the compression process.
In one approach, relatively considerable amounts of oil are injected into the compressor to absorb heat generated through the compression stage.
In the second approach, a mixture of liquid and vapor refrigerant from the expansion stage is injected at various points during compression to provide cooling.

A new type of heat pump being developed at Purdue University could allow residents in cold climates to cut their heating bills in half.

In the meanwhile here some ways to improve you home air quality and save energy:

- Ensure your thermostat is located in a spot that’s not too cold or hot.

- Install an automatic timer to keep the thermostat at 68 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees during the night.

- Use storm or thermal windows in colder areas. The layer of air between the windows acts as insulation helping to keep the heat inside the spot where you are interested.

- If you haven’t already, insulate your attic and all outside walls.

- Insulate floors over unheated spaces like your basement, any crawl spaces as well as your garage.

- Close off the attic, garage, basement, spare bedrooms and storage areas. Heat just those rooms that you use.

- Seal gaps around any pipes, wires, vents or other openings that could transfer your heat to areas that aren’t heated.

- Dust is a wonderful insulator and tends to build up on radiators and baseboard heat vents.

A lot of people do not know that common indoor air quality practices reduce home air heating costs too:

- Rain and high humidity may bring moisture indoors, creating dampness, mold spores — big problems for healthy indoor air. Check your roof, foundation and basement or crawlspace one per year to catch leaks or moisture problems and route water away from your home’s foundation.

- Help keep asthma triggers away from your house by fixing leaks and drips when they start. Standing water and high humidity encourage the development of dust mites, mold and mildew — probably the most common triggers that can worsen asthma. Use a dehumidifier or air conditioner when needed, and clean both regularly.

- High levels of moisture in your home increase dampness and the growth of mold, which not only damage your property but threaten health. Install and run exhaust fans in bathrooms to get rid of unhealthy moisture and odors out of your home.

- Ventilate your kitchen stove directly outside or open a kitchen window when you cook. Keeping exhaust — including cooking odors and particles — outside of your home prevents dangerous fumes and particles from harming you or your family.

About the author :
Rosalind Dall writes for the ductless split air conditioner blog, her personal hobby blog dedicated to suggestions to help people consume less energy and purify indoor air.

A big thanks to Ross for providing his first hand experience with the SuperCool mask. You can follow Ross at twitter

Ross X, the "dude-on-a-bike"

But when I wrote to the company informing of my problem they were willing to offer a few suggestions. One was to try cutting the mask to better fit my head, but the other was about this new version that only covers your mouth. I gave it a try.

That I am no longer exhaling into the mask, the fogging glasses issue has completely disappeared. (I breathe in through my mouth, which is in the mask/filter, and out through my nose.) Actually, I think I get a better seal with this smaller mask than I did the full one. And I find there is much less condensation collecting in the mask (no humid exhale within the mask), which means I do not need to wash the mask as often. This may also have a positive impact on the filters (keeping them drier), but I’m not a scientist, so I can’t credibly comment on that.

Pulling down the mask to talk to other cyclists is also very easy with this mask. You can talk through the mask, but you might sound a little like Darth Vader, so I simply pull the mask down around my chin if I want to talk, then pull it back up when I ride on. The side straps are very stretchy.

I also have a mask by another company–it’s neoprene and velcros in the back. I haven’t really tried this mask extensively due to a few reasons: 1. it looks like it would tend to get hot in the summer days here in Los Angeles–as it covers a lot of skin on your face and neck essentially with a wetsuit, 2. the metal nose bracket, which I thought would be beneficial to get a good seal, seemed to irritate my nose, and 3. the Totobobo is just so light and easy to use I just haven’t had a compelling urge to try another mask.

Big props to the company–who has seemed to design a great, simple product–and whose customer service has been very responsive and helpful. When I change out the filters they are visibly discolored–and I’m glad that at least some of that stuff that I otherwise would be breathing (dirt, pollution, particulate matter, brake shoe dust, etc.) is in the filter instead of in my lungs.

Ross, the dudeonabike

SuperCool pollution mask helps cyclist and motorcyclist to fight traffic fume

Cyclists and Motorcyclists! If you are looking for a pollution mask that really sucks, your long awaiting search has come to an end. The new pollution mask from TOTOBOBO, called SuperCool mask, is designed to suck more, traffic fume that is— leaving only the clean air for your lung. Its high efficient filter keeps the nasty nano-particles out and doesn’t diminish the oxygen you pull in with each breath.

“The SuperCool is the world’s first pollution mask with the nose uncovered. Such unexpected feature brings surprising advantages. First of all, exhaling through the nostrils will never fog up your glasses. Having the nose free means you can clear your nose while protecting your lungs – a necessary edge when racing traffic or just cruising through town.” according to Francis Chu, a cyclist and the designer of SuperCool. “You can even switch between nose and mouth breathing instantly when riding through alternate clean and polluted area – no need to stop to remove or put on the mask.”

Whereas other masks require intense scrubbing to keep them clean, the TOTOBOBO can be washed and dried within minutes. Your breathing gear will no longer have a funky film of week-old bacteria. Even if you do, the SuperCool is easier to clean than the dishes in your sink. The rest of your cycling gear can be smelly and gross, but at least the one that covering your face should be kept clean—and odor free. Oh, and germs? No worries. The SuperCool is embedded with anti-microbial Silver ion inside out so nothing can grow on it.

The SuperCool mask is customizable to fit your face as need be. This helps to keep the best fit and seal. It also prevents your roommate or sibling from borrowing it and getting it covered in their germs.

The only way the TOTOBOBO SuperCool doesn’t suck is the SSS-look – Sleek, Slick and Slim, a far cry from other protective masks which look like the gear of a Storm-trooper from Star Wars. The SuperCool is small enough to fold into your pocket and weighs next to nothing (18 grams). It will slide under any helmet and leave plenty of rooms for glasses or goggles.

Best of all, the TOTOBOBO SuperCool mask is reusable, just replacing the filters as it turns grey. The SuperCool mask and filter are now available at totobobo.com. You will even get a free reusable pouch for carrying the mask!

About Totobobo:
Totobobo is the world’s first customizable respiratory mask designed to fit both adults and children. It has been sold to over 35 countries. Totobobo mask uses patented technology that ensures comfort and good protection from pollutants.
Totobobo is a trade mark of Dream Lab One Pte. Ltd.

Related:
Protect your lungs when riding in the city

More advanced features of TOTOBOBO mask

How to customize TOTOBOBO mask to fit your face?

12 useful features for cyclist

How to clean TOTOBOBO mask for reuse?

Buy TOTOBOBO mask

Last week we visited the World Expo in Shanghai. The city has expanded and modernized since my last visit only four years ago. We had planned on staying three days, but could only manage two.

The Expo has been a huge success for visitors and locals alike: approximately 300,000 to 600,000 people attend daily. For Shanghainese, it is a golden opportunity to see snapshots of the world without leaving town. Large crowds translate into long lines. Popular pavilions, like the China, Japan, or German exhibits, can be as long as a three to six hour wait! Waiting in line for multiple hours can be exhausting and will take your strength out of you for the rest of the day. We ended up seeing the Australia and Austria exhibits at the end of the day when lines were shorter.

Since arriving I monitored the air quality in Shanghai and was shocked by the very poor conditions in the city. Airbone particulates are produced by the heavy industry, constant construction, and ever-present automobiles around Shanghai. The reading on my laser particle counter registered between 10,000 to 20,000 in Hong Kong, 30,000 in Guangzhou, but in Shanghai 40,500! That’s over ten times the “very poor” rating of 3000.

After the visit, I collected the following 6 great tips for anyone visiting the Shanghai World Expo:

1) Don’t let the poor air spoil the fun. Bring a Totobobo mask: The air pollution in Shanghai is worse than Hong Kong or Guangzhou. Bring a good mask if you have a sensitive nose. The Totobobo mask doubles as an air-moisturizer on your long flight to China.

2) Avoid queues and optimize your time: Enjoy the exterior architecture during the day. Visit the less popular pavilions before 7pm and check out the more popular ones later when there are fewer visitors.

3) Manage your energy so you can keep exploring throughout the day. Standing in a queue or reading the exhibit can be exhausting. Go to the many eateries or take short breaks to replenish your strength.

4) Research before arriving: the Expo site is huge. Even if you have a whole week you can not see it all. Plan which pavilions you want to see beforehand so you can save time and see everything you want.

5) Expo taxi: Keep the Expo Taxi hotline on hand: 96822. Their service is efficient and the cost is very reasonable, and it will make the difference between seeing what you want and waiting around for a cab.

6) Sight seeing: Shanghai has plenty to offer visitors throughout the year. My favorites are the Bund, Nanjing Dong Lu pedestrian shopping boulevard, Hung Shan Lu historic residential area and Tien Zhe Fong art and design café that preserves classic shikumen architecture.

Most of all, however, bring a smile and a positive attitude and you will be sure to enjoy your time in Shanghai.

(Thanks to Ken Martin of Nursingschools.net for the heads up)

workers cleaning oil spill in toxic pollution

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which began after an explosion crippled the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, is now the biggest oil disaster in U.S. history. Cleaning the mess will take months, and the longer-term effects on health and wildlife will take years to heal.

Right Now

Sickness among clean-up workers: The combination of oil fumes and heat from the Gulf has led to several workers being hospitalized from fumes, and the curious chemical makeup of some of the substances used to clean up the oil can often lead to skin irritation or, at high levels, cancer.
Danger to marine life: The underwater nature of the spill means it’s that much closer to undersea life, and therefore able to do more damage in a shorter amount of time.
Aggravation of existing illnesses: People already suffering from asthma or similar lung diseases could see their conditions worsened because of exposure to oil and chemicals.
Pregnancy risks: The oil contains many volatile and toxic chemicals, some of which have been linked to premature birth, low birth weight, and miscarriages, making the Gulf Coast region a dangerous one for pregnant women.
Smoke fallout: Planned burns of spilled oil on the ocean’s surface have a way of backfiring. Often, particles held in the smoke drift down to earth and wind up in people’s eyes and lungs, which can aggravate existing medical conditions for some.

In the Future

Neurological disorders: Some of the fishermen who cleaned up the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 wound up suffering neurological problems as a result of prolonged exposure to a toxic cocktail of chemicals.
Food contamination: There’s still no telling how badly the food chain will be damaged by the oil spill. One scientist at the National Resources Defense Council said there will be a “legacy of contamination.”
Oxygen depletion: Hypoxia occurs when dissolved oxygen in the water is reduced so much that the imbalance begins to harm aquatic lifeforms. The process is exacerbated by the microbes in the chemicals used to clean up the leaking oil.
Dispersion of oil: Many experts are predicting that the oil will continue to flow into the Gulf well into August, which increases the likelihood that it might be picked up by the Gulf Stream currents and carried out to the Atlantic Ocean. That would, in turn, affect animals dwelling there, including dolphins.
Lung disease: One of the dispersants being used to clean the spill, Corexit, is one of the most toxic available, which could lead to potential lung problems for cleaners and workers who inhale the fumes and particles without wearing proper breathing equipment.

Source: Nursingschools.net

The Sunday Times – by Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7140213.ece

cyclists riding in traffic inhale 5 times more pollution than drivers and padestrian

The research involved fitting cyclists with devices that could count the particles, mostly emitted by car exhausts, in the air they were breathing.

It showed that urban concentrations of nanoparticles, which measure just a few millionths of a millimetre, could reach several hundred thousand in a cubic centimetre of air.

The particles, when inhaled, have been linked to heart disease and respiratory problems.

Because they are exerting themselves, cyclists breathe harder and faster than other road users. The study found that they suck in about 1,000 cubic cm with each breath, meaning they may inhale tens of millions of the particles each time they fill their lungs, and billions during a whole journey.

“This is the first time anyone has counted the particles while also measuring people’s breathing during city commuting. It showed that cyclists can inhale an astonishing number of pollutant particles in one journey,” said Luc Int Panis of the transport research institute at Hasselt University in Belgium, who led the study.

For the research, just published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, Int Panis and his colleagues asked cyclists to pedal while wearing a mask fitted with instruments that could measure and count the particulates, as such particles are known. All are invisible even in severely polluted air.

The researchers found that in Brussels the cyclists inhaled 5.58m nanoparticles for every metre cycled, dropping to about 1.1m when they tried the experiment in Mol, a much smaller town in Belgium.

They also found the cyclists inhaled four to five times more particles than a car passenger driven along the same route.

Int Panis said: “The air pollution figures in a big city like London or Birmingham are the same as or greater than in Brussels so British city cyclists will experience similar effects.”

For cyclists and other road users, the key question is what the health impact might be of inhaling so many particles.

This has been one of the hardest questions to answer because the time lag between exposure to pollutants and developing an illness is usually long.

Earlier researchers had the same difficulty when studying whether smoking was linked to lung cancer, and it took decades to confirm the connection.

New techniques for gathering and analysing data mean, however, that the health problems caused by particulates are emerging much more quickly.

A study carried out in London, to be published soon in the journal Epidemiology, is expected to show that exposures to high concentrations of nanoparticles are associated with a higher risk of heart disease. It will also show an association between larger particulates and respiratory health.

Other studies have shown that exposure to particulate pollution can have rapid short-term effects too — such as provoking asthma attacks.

In a 2007 study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Imperial College London asked 60 people with mild or moderate asthma to walk along the western end of the busy Oxford Street in central London, where only diesel-powered taxis and buses, plus cyclists, are permitted. The volunteers suffered asthma symptoms such as reduced breathing capacity and lung inflammation.

Diesel vehicles emit far higher levels of pollutant nanoparticles than petrol engines.

What alarms health researchers is that such particles are so small that they penetrate the lungs and circulate in the blood. They are then thought to accumulate in organs such as the heart and brain and cause inflammatory reactions.

Wearing a mask offers little protection as the particles are so small that they pass straight through any shield.

Earlier this year, such fears prompted the House of Commons environmental audit select committee to publish a report warning that air pollution caused about 50,000 premature deaths a year in Britain.

Int Panis’s research has already annoyed cycling groups. He has decided not to attend Velo-city 2010, a conference on cycling to be held in Copenhagen next month, because of the hostility he faced when announcing preliminary results of his research.

Int Panis and his colleagues point out that cycling still brings many health benefits and hope that it may be healthier than driving a car.

Int Panis said: “I am a cyclist and the idea that riding a bike might be less healthy than driving is not pleasant, but I am also a scientist, so I have to look at the data.”

Oprah Winfrey and reality TV producer Mark Burnett (SurvivorTM & The ApprenticeTM) join forces to search of the next big TV show

If one has cancer, the choices available are few and painful. We all want better answers to common physical problems. Wouldn’t it be great to watch a show that helps individuals with all the available choices that address their problem? Alternative,medical,diet, nutrition and what ever else is out there?

.

Debra Witter share her experience of supporting her daughter, Kayla, to fight cancer on freehelpforcancer.com.
Her site is a useful reference for cancer patients who wants to combine Medical & Alternatives methods to increase their chances of survival. Totobobo mask is one of her tips for people with compromised immune system to protect themselves.

She told us in a letter:

“Kayla has worn your mask every day since January 2009 and she has not been sick in any way since that time. She attends school every day and no sickness. This despite still being immune compromised. The doctors said that her immune system will not recover from the chemo for another six months. Your mask is our safety net that has proven for us its workability. When Kayla did not have the mask and went to school she ended up in the hospital for two weeks, every month, for three months, totaling 45 days. With the mask -no sickness, no hospitalizations, no colds, nothing. Your mask is far superior to any other mask on the market. Period!”

Now Debbie wants to reach out to much more people and you can actually help! She need your help to vote for her proposal for a new TV show on Oprah Winfrey’s network:

Debra Witte and testimonial to her freehelpforcancer.com

My show idea is to feature people with a physical problem and treat them similar to that house make over show, except with this show they would have a whole team of experts providing all the available answers for that problem. In other words, diet, nutrition, alternative therapies, and medical. This is how I was able to help my daughter through her 2.5 years of cancer treatment. We applied everything that the doctors would allow us to do, and it was a lot. My girl is now cancer free and I am trying to compete in this network for my own cable TV show. That is the prize, YOUR OWN CABLE TV SHOW.

I am not movie person, have never been on TV, have no experience in this area. What I do have is experience with serious illness and researching medical journals, books and the Internet to find medically validated solutions to the health problem being addressed. I think people want answers like this, now more than ever. With the economic stresses that so many are under, it would be a very daunting task to try and figure out all the answers by themselves. That is where I come in an find the experts and all valid therapies relevant for their specific problem. This also educates the viewers that are watching. Unfortunately, most of us know people who are battling something on the physical front.

If you feel this is a good idea please jump to her audition video to vote for her.

Note: Your OWN Show: Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star” is a competition series that will premier on OWN, Oprah Winfrey’s new network, in 2011. The winner of the series will host their own talk show produced for OWN.