A trip to Beijing and experiencing its very bad air quality made a Stanford University associate professor and his students design an air filter from a material used in surgical gloves that would help users breathe cleaner air.

The first part of the work of Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, was to search for polymers that would have a strong attraction to particulate matters that are smaller than 2.5 micros, also known as PM2.5. The PM2.5 are the greatest risks to the human respiratory system.

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Yi and his team of graduate students found polyarcylonitrile (PAN) which is used to make surgical gloves. The team then used a technique, electrospinning, which converted liquid PAN into fibers that are like the web created by spiders.

To test how effective the fiber is in trapping PM2.5, the group used smoke from a burning incense to simulate the Beijing smog, followed by a real field test in the capital city. Both tests showed that the final material offers 70 percent transparency, but it was able to collect 99 percent of the particles.

Cui explained that the transparency and distance between fibers allow light and air to pass through the material very efficiently, making it a good material for windows.

It could also filter exhaust from car tailpipes and smoke from chimneys of factories and industrial zones. However, he said it might need more testing for those types of applications to ensure that it could withstand the other acidic or toxic compounds from those types of exhaust.

Given the possibilities that the material offers, Cui said, "it might be the first time in years that people in Beijing can open their window and let in a fresh breeze."

Meanwhile, Xinhua reports that because of the fireworks for the Lunar New Year celebration, air pollution reached "dangerous levels" in 106 Chinese cities as their air quality index went beyond 300.