How Delhi’s rich are escaping air pollution

Until two years ago, Parth Phiroze Mehrotra used between 10 and 12 air purifiers in his apartment in South Delhi to ensure that he could breathe clean air at home.

The devices needed considerable maintenance. Mehrotra had to change their filters two or three times a year. Because he kept the doors of his rooms closed, he also had to install dehumidifiers in his home to ensure that moisture did not build up and lead to the formation of mould.

Then, Mehrotra came across another solution – a ventilation and air purification system that would create a “clean air bubble” inside his home. To install it, the company that he bought the system from, YOGa Air, cut a cavity in a wall of his home – the system brought in air through this cavity and passed it through a filtration mechanism. A pressure regulation mechanism ensured that fresh air stayed indoors and stale air was pushed out.

“Compared to all these things that were needed to make sure the air purifiers worked efficiently, YOGa Air is much cheaper,” said Mehrotra, who is the editor-in-chief at Juggernaut Books.

A YOGa Air representative told Scroll that a 1,500-square-foot home would need a single unit, which costs around Rs 1.5 lakh. The cost for a commercial space of a similar size could be higher, since the company would also have to take into account the occupancy of the space. The representative explained that installation is typically completed within two hours, and that once the system is switched on, PM2.5 levels can drop to 15 ug/m3 within two hours.

Customers pay an annual maintenance cost of Rs 18,000, which covers all maintenance work by the company. “You outsource your home's air quality to us,” said the representative.

YOGa Air is one of several new firms that are offering new kinds of air purifying products for private use. These companies are primarily focusing on customers in Delhi, given the city's abysmal air quality and large population.

While room air purifiers have been in use in the city for roughly the last decade, these companies are marketing products that range from these centralised air purification systems, which can create “air bubbles” within entire homes and offices, to wearable air purifiers that can be hung around the neck.

In his book Atmosphere of Collaboration: Air Pollution Science, Politics and Ecopreneurship in Delhi, Rohit Negi, associate professor at IIM Calcutta, wrote that this breed of “airpreneurs” emerged around 2014 and has grown rapidly since. He noted, “given its air quality, the disproportionate media coverage and the purchasing power of many residents, Delhi contributes strongly to this market”.

But experts also warn that the growth of these companies and products, many of which are prohibitively expensive, represents a dangerous trend from the perspective of public health.

Because air pollution usually affects both the rich and the poor, its health risks could serve as a “catalysing factor” that pushes authorities to tackle it, said Arjun Kamdar, a conservation scientist and doctoral candidate at Cambridge University, whose research is at the intersection of behavioural economics, psychology, and conservation.

The availability of expensive products to protect the rich leaves many thinking “they can buy themselves out of this problem”, Kamdar said. “This narrative then crowds out the motivation by the government and people to do anything about air pollution.”

For Jai Dhar Gupta, it was the authorities' uneven response to Delhi's air pollution crisis that prompted him to set up a company called Nirvana Being. One of its products is the “O2 curve mask”, a silicon seal mask with a filter, designed specifically for use by sportspeople. It was developed by a company based in Canada, and is sold in India by firms such as Nirvana Being.

Gupta recounted that he used to be an active runner until he was diagnosed with bronchial asthma in 2013.

“I started to look for solutions for myself. That is how the business came about,” he said.

Gupta explained that the mask his company sells is of the N90 standard, slightly lower than the N95 standard that the World Health Organisation recommends for Delhi-NCR's severe air pollution – he noted that the N90 mask allowed for protection while also ensuring more comfortable breathing during active movement. Depending on whether a customer buys the mask alone or along with replaceable filters, it costs between Rs 2,200 and Rs 3,900.

Nirvana Being sells other products as well, such as air filters for cars and homes. They also sell a steam inhaler that is equipped with a filter, so that users can inhale purified steam – the device is priced at around Rs 13,000.

Gupta explained that in the early years, his company's business primarily came from a limited pool of customers – chiefly expats working in Delhi, multinational corporations that had offices in the city, and residents who had underlying health problems.

Now, he said, the pool had widened, and many others were seeking these products primarily for their homes. “The biggest business has now become homes,” Gupta said.

He added that many now saw these devices as necessities. “People want to keep their families safe,” he said. He compared the adoption of these devices to the process by which “water purifiers have become a necessity.”

Mehrotra, the editor, has two of YOGa Air's units installed at home, and he runs them through the year. “This morning, when I left my home, the PM2.5 inside was between 1 to 3,” he said, on a day when parts of Delhi were recording PM2.5 beyond 400 ug/m3.

The system has brought him an additional benefit. He recounted that he would earlier also often wake up with headaches because the constant use of a purifier in a closed room would lead to an increase in carbon dioxide levels – the gas is released through exhalation and purifiers cannot typically remove them. But the YOGa Air system allows stale air to escape and replenishes it with fresh air – Mehrotra noted that his headaches had ceased since he began using it.

The new breed of companies is not only catering to individuals and homes. In South Delhi's GK-1 market, a Nirvana Being centralised purification system ensures that the Greenr Café provides a clean air environment for its staff and customers.

The café, which serves only plant-based products, has an outdoor exhaust that first sucks in air, which is run through a filtration system and gently released indoors through a shaft.

Near the shaft, a monitor displays real-time air quality indicators – at noon on the day Scroll visited, the PM10 level was 155 ug/m3 when the city's average PM10 that day was above 300 ug/m3. The carbon dioxide level was at a higher value of 1258 ppm. “Since we just opened the café for the day and switched this on, it takes a little time to start functioning effectively,” a staff member said.

At present, the system is only installed in the upper floor of the cafe. Nirvana Being has installed a similar system for the Director's Cut PVR cinema at Delhi's Ambience Mall, as well as in gyms of Fitness First, and the JW Marriott hotel at Aerocity.

The US Embassy in New Delhi's Chanakyapuri, meanwhile, uses an entirely different technology, one that is not widely available at the moment and can even clean up air outdoors.

Developed by the Netherlands-based ENS Clean Air Solutions, this system uses a large metallic device with an exhaust fan that sucks in polluted air into a patented device called “Aufero”.

According to ENS' website, the device “captures” airborne pollutants on a “collector plate”, where they are “transformed as coarse dust”. Once converted to dust, the airborne pollutants “are immobilized, thereby eliminating the possibility for them to be emitted and inhaled”.

Indian authorities are also studying this technology. Minutes of a March 2023 Commission for Air Quality Management meeting that Scroll accessed, which mentioned that the technology was installed at the US Embassy, also noted that IIT Delhi was conducting trials for it. These trials found that over two years of operation, the device reduced PM2.5 levels by up to 30% and 35% in parking lots, and up to 10% across an area of 1 km.

But the CAQM also noted that the system is still “at the demonstration level”, and as of now “nowhere in the country has been demonstrated for sustainable basis”.

While most devices purify air in fixed spaces, a newer kind of product is the wearable air purifier, a small pebble-shaped device that is hung around one's neck. An Indian brand called Atovio sells the device for Rs 3,500, and claims that it reduces pollution by 90% in a person's breathing space within an hour of operation.

The company's website states that the device has been tested at IIT Kanpur, and uses an “advanced variable anion technology” which “releases millions of anions into the air every second” – these, upon attaching to harmful airborne particles such as PM2.5, PM10 and pollen, neutralise them, the website states.

These devices gained some attention when the member of parliament Shashi Tharoor was spotted wearing one in 2020. Last December, he put up a favourable post on X about wearing the Atovio air purifier, but then posted again a few hours later that the device had stopped working.

In an email response to Scroll, Atovio stated that they got in touch with Tharoor's staff immediately, who confirmed that the device was “charged incorrectly” – once charged properly, the company said, “it functioned normally.” It also noted that after this incident, the company carried out an additional quality check as a precaution, and that it had not seen similar reports since.

A 2016 study of such wearable devices showed contrasting results. The scientists compared the ability of four such devices to remove particles from the air, without mentioning their brand names. They also compared their tendency to build-up ozone – purification devices that use ionisation technology can generate ozone as a byproduct, large quantities of which can be harmful to breathe.

The study found that some wearable purifiers “would lead to elevated ozone concentration within the near-head region with poor particle removal performance”, while others could remove particles without ozone emissions. It suggested that such devices should have “regulatory guidelines” to “help customers select useful devices to mitigate their exposures to PM without increasing ozone exposures”.

Atovio told Scroll that they use a “completely different system, a controlled low voltage anion mechanism” which ensures that their “ozone emission is 0%”. It noted, “Our ozone levels are below detectable limits and within international IEC safety norms,” they said, referring to the International Electrotechnical Commission, which develops standards pertaining to electrical and electronic technologies.

Even as the market of these products is growing, Gupta conceded that for the moment these new technologies also only cater to a specific economic class. “We are aware that we cannot get to the mass market,” said Gupta. “We are scientific, and we are not going to use cheap parts which would compromise the air quality.”

Source: Scroll
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