NEW DELHI: The government is marketing a motorcycle helmet with filters and a fan at the rear that it claims can remove 80% of pollutants as New Delhi, the capital of India, gets ready for winter and the attendant season of bitter smog.State organisations have invested thousands of dollars in Shellios Technolabs, a startup whose creator Amit Pathak started developing the helmet in a basement in 2016.
That year saw the first news stories about the polluted air that, from mid-December to early February, makes it practically impossible to breathe in New Delhi due to the cold that traps dust, car emissions, and smoke from burning crop waste in neighbouring states.
An air purifier might be installed inside a house or place of business, according to electrical engineer Pathak. However, the bike-riding men are completely unprotected.Therefore, his business created a helmet with an air purification system that has a replacement filter membrane and a fan that is driven by a battery that lasts six hours and can be recharged using a microUSB port.
The helmet’s sales started in 2019, and independent laboratory testing on the streets of New Delhi found it can block more than 80% of pollutants from entering users’ nostrils, Pathak noted.
