A charity was launched last week to raise enough funds to purchase five hundred air purifiers to donate to schools in Shanghai and help them combat indoor air pollution.
The donation period will continue until October 31 and during this time, both enterprises and individuals are welcome to contribute funds.
All kindergartens, primary and middle schools in Shanghai are eligible to apply for the air purifiers, and 50 schools will be selected for the donation.
So why all of a sudden is there a need for classrooms to install air purifiers? It turns out that polluted air, high concentration of carbon dioxide, hazardous airborne particles and bacteria are common in classrooms.
According to statistics, there are approximately two million students in Shanghai schools. Every day, these students spend an average of 6 to 8 hours inside their classrooms, which makes them easily subjected to indoor air pollution.
Many parents may assume that air pollution can be eliminated as long as classroom doors and windows are tightly closed. “It’s not going to work,” said Gao Jun, Professor for the College of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Tongji University. “Even if we employ the most airtight doors and windows, they can only prevent 40% of the pollutants.”
Nevertheless, only a few schools in Shanghai are currently equipped with air purifiers as they are not compulsory teaching resources regulated by the Ministry of Education. Lack of budget to purchase them is also a factor, especially for public schools.
“The donation marks our first attempt towards improving the air quality within schools,” said Li Wei, Director of the Environmental Protection Fund for the foundation. “By doing this, we are exploring a suitable solution to combat indoor air pollution in classrooms. Data will also be collected for us to make future plans.”
According to Li, once the purifiers are no longer in operation, they will be collected for unified processing to avoid resource waste and unnecessary pollution.
[Images via Kankanews]
