Did you know air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year? According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) data, nine out of 10 people breathe air containing high levels of pollutants.
Closer home, in June 2019, a report by an environmental organization, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), stipulated that life expectancy in India has gone down by 2.6 years due to the deadly diseases caused by air pollution. The third highest cause of death, ranking just above smoking in India, is the combined effect of outdoor particulate matter (PM) 2.5, ozone and household air pollution.
Meet Prateek Sharma, an IIT-Delhi alumnus who with a dream team consisting of fellow IIITians, Tushar Vyas and Jatin Kewlani, supported by faculty members, Prof Ashwini Agrawal and Prof Manjeet Jassal, established award-winning startup, Nanoclean Global Private Limited. A startup that has been developing low-cost preventive measures for polluted air and innovations for air filtration.
Nanoclean was awarded the National Startups Award by former President Pranab Mukherjee in 2017, recognised among the top 25 technical startups from over 118 countries by the Republic of Korea and selected among Top 100 Startups in the World by the Hong Kong government, making it the only Indian startup to achieve this feat.
Born in Jaipur and raised in Bikaner, Rajasthan, Prateek Sharma had grown up watching his own mother, an asthmatic, struggle with both indoor and outdoor pollution and sand storms, a common phenomenon in the desert state.
“It ached me to always see her cover her mouth with a dupatta when she walked outside. Growing up, I would either alter existing masks in the markets or gift her different types of equipment like nose-insertion buds. But nothing seemed to work. She refused to wear a mask stating that people would think she is sick if she stepped out with it and the nose-insertion buds created a lot of discomfort.”
Today, the innovative nasal filter that his team has developed, christened ‘Nasofilter’, costing close to Rs 10 a piece, is protecting people in 30 countries against air pollutants.
Launched as one of the first commercial products by the startup which was incubated at IIT-Delhi, it is a respiratory filter that restricts the entry of dust and tiny suspended particulate matter from entering your system while breathing.
Particulate matter refers to the microscopic solid particles and liquid droplets floating in the atmosphere. Fine (PM2.5) and coarse (PM10) particles are considered to be the most hazardous pollutants.
Nasofilter uses nanotechnology to create nanofibres by reducing the thread diameter of a normal fabric by 100 times, creating millions of pores in a tiny area to filter out pollutants.
The resulting device can combat 90 per cent PM2.5 and 95 per cent PM10 particles.
It is small and easy to wear biodegradable polymer. In stark contrast to large traditional face masks, it is a transparent filter that covers your nostrils, is invisible from a distance and can be worn for up to 24 hours.
Costing as low as Rs 400, this device has been designed to complement existing filtering screens of wall-mounted air conditioners. Simply put, it converts your AC into an air purifier at no recurring electricity cost, using nanotechnology.
It removes PM2.5 and other Micro-Particle pollutants from the air inside homes while cooling it at an affordable cost.
Indoor air pollution is considered 10 times worse than outdoor air pollution due to the potential of contained spaces to allow pollutants to build up more in our system than open spaces. And while major cases are often seen in rural areas owing to the use of chulhas and firewood, indoor pollution is also witnessing a steady rise in leading cities.
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22/09/2019
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22/09/2019
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