If you live in a big city, or have visited a big city and noticed that there was a visual haze hanging over the buildings, you have experienced smog. Smog is a dangerous pollutant that affects our breathing, and it can have disastrous consequences on our long term health.
Few cities on the planet can compete with the level of smog that currently hangs over the city of Beijing, China. The air is so bad there that people have taken to moving around the city wearing surgical masks in an effort to protect their health.
Scientists have been trying to figure out ways to not only decrease the amount of smog that we are producing, but also how to actually deal with the smog in the atmosphere. One company believes that they have found a solution for cleaning up the air the people of Beijing are breathing in, by turning it into diamonds.
The plan that they have come up with will surprise you. They are attempting to take the particles out of the air in order to turn them into beautiful diamonds.
The solution came from the mind of artist Daan Roosegaarde, who designed a tower that acts as a smog vacuum, collecting the particles in the air that can become lodged in your lungs. The first tower was installed in a local Beijing park to see if they could create a pocket of clean air for people to enjoy.
The particles that are collected from the air are actually predominantly made up of carbon, which gave the designers a great idea for what to do with the particles collected by the vacuum. For those of you that remember high school science class, diamonds are just carbon that have been exposed to immense pressure over a lengthy period of time, so that's what they did, they are turning smog pollution into diamonds.
The diamonds are being incorporated into simple, yet beautiful pieces of jewelry which are being called, Smog Free Diamonds.
Would you wear a diamond created by cleaning smog out of the air we breath?