Catalytic Clothing from Helen Storey Foundation on Vimeo.
Blossom trees, gelati, gallivanting about the city; Spring has hit. After a magical weekend in the country I am sun drenched, exhausted and happy to be home in the city, the only thing I wistfully glance towards the outskirts for is the fresh air. Spending more time outside has made me more aware of the air I'm breathing. Especially in cities, cars, buses and trucks decrease the air quality and contribute anthropogenic carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Across the world countries have started to clamp down on emissions, which has started to make progress in improving air quality. In Hong Kong the eternal smog is slowly starting to dissipate and I saw blue skies last April in Beijing. Counter to this, the rapid growth in population who need motor vehicles for mobility thanks to my pet hate, urban sprawl, makes pollution control regulation much harder to manage.
This is an issue that is being tackled by Professors Helen Storey and Tony Ryan who combine their fashion and chemistry knowledge to design garments that purify the air around a wearer. Christened Catalytic Clothing, the garments use a photocatalyst process to break down air borne pollutants. The photocatalytic garments don't react themselves, but break down particles in the air, using energy from light. The clothes break down pollutants, any pollutants that aren't broken down and become attached to garments wash off in normal washing machines, and this already happens with normal clothing. To make the catalytic clothes, the photocatalyst is delivered to the fabric surface during washing. The active agent is attracted and bound to the surface of the garment, and when the garment dries is is ready to purify air. The technology doesn't actively attract pollutants, rather breaking down anything that comes close enough. Nitrous oxide is converted to soluble nitrate while volatile organics and converted into fatty acids and soaps. Now I'm no chemist but I would much rather take a bath with soaps then volatile organics and nitrous oxide.
These garments sound amazing to me, image pure air even in congested city centers, so how long until this laundry additive is in all of our detergents? The Catalytic Clothing estimates 2 years, and I assume they will have to do some serious testing to make sure the photocatalytic cells bind to different fabrics without harming people or the environment. Also as the impact of each garment is small (for every metre of pavement in a busy city, 30 have to walk past per minute to cleanse the air fully) a large number of people need to be wearing the garments.
I'll be one.