As major Chinese provinces and cities continue to be blanketed by thick smog, Chinese citizens turn to bottled air for a chance of breathing pure and fresh oxygen, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.

Breathing fresh air in a bottle, however, comes with a price. According to the company that sells the canned oxygen, a bottle of air that gives at least 150 breaths of pure and smog-free oxygen costs about Rmb120 yuan, or US$18.5.

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But that price comes with an assurance that the can contains nothing but the purest air from the Rocky Mountains. Each can of air also contains natural energy, or so the owners of the company that sells the bottled air claim.

Bottled air is getting all the attention in China, where 40 cities in the north have issued alerts for air pollution, after the British Broadcasting Corporation showed screenshots of a woman breathing air from a can.

The screenshots immediately went viral and triggered strong demands for the cans of fresh air from Chinese residents. The cans are sold by a Canadian firm, Vitality Air.

The owners of Vitality Air claimed that the canned air were manufactured to meet demands in Canada and the United States but they decided to introduce the products to China about two months ago.

Vitality Air's marketing director, Catherine Qi, said they tested the Chinese waters on China's Singles' Day on Alibaba's Tmall. The first batch of 500 canned air sold out in a few minutes.

The company also received orders for 4,000 more bottles within the day, Qi told Xinhua.

While many Chinese consider that latest product as interesting, there were those who expressed skepticism. Some said the product is nothing but a mere marketing gimmick that mocks the country's environmental woes.

On Wednesday, the port city of Tianjin and the province of Hebei issued air pollution red alerts for the first time, joining the neighboring Beijing in experiencing what the official Xinhua news agency described as bout of choking smog.

TagsChina Air Pollution, Bottled Air