Crying kids’ faces beamed on smokestacks bring message home

23 Jun 2015

To highlight the effect air pollution is having on the health of children in China, one company has taken the rather terrifying but important step of projecting the faces of children onto power-plant smokestacks.

While rather creepy to watch, the air purification company called Xiao Zhu decided to produce the video called Breathe Again to highlight the issue of air pollution and climate change.

In the video, children of various ages and levels of distress are beamed directly onto the columns of billowing smoke being emitted from one of China’s many coal-fuelled power plants.

While China is by far the largest developer of solar energy in the world, its legacy issues and population mean it still has one of the unhealthiest levels of air pollution anywhere in the world.

Just by looking at the air quality index online, at the time of writing, many of China’s cities are considered at least unhealthy or dangerous, with many citizens having to wear masks to limit the inhalation of smog.

In February, the city of Baoding was named China’s most polluted city and, by the government’s own statistics, had only 16 days in the entire year when its air was considered safe.

The Xiao Zhu campaign is now calling on China to begin the process of cleaning up its air for future generations.

Asian child wearing a face mask image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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