AIRBENDER
| dc.contributor.author | Bartoszek, Oli | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-07-31T21:55:35Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-07-31T21:55:35Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2020 | |
| dc.description | 89 pages | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | The starting target market for the Airbender is both males and females between the ages of 20 - 30. It is targeted at endurance athletes, but more specifically sub-elite distance runners who train 4-6 times a week primarily for personal wellness. In major cities across the world, and more notably in developing countries with poor environmental regulations, air pollution is considered a major risk to health, responsible for as many as 8 million deaths per year worldwide11 and a decrease in life expectancy of 2 years12. "To put this into perspective, this means that air pollution causes more extra deaths a year than tobacco smoking, which the World Health Organization estimates was responsible for an extra 7.2 million deaths in 2015. Smoking is avoidable but air pollution is not.”11 Although there are various industrial and recreational air filtration masks available, there are no options designed specifically for athletes where fit and air flow rate are the most important features.As it relates to China and Beijing in particular, studies by Greenpeace have found that “the capital’s smog is laced with a range of heavy metals, the worst being arsenic, which reaches six times the Chinese and European limits on heavily polluted days.”13 In the same study the researcher commented, “even running on lightly polluted days a lot of people will think, ‘Oh, the AQI is only 100 so I can go for a jog. What many of people don’t know is that jogging when the AQI is 100 is the same as walking when the AQI is 250. If you wouldn’t walk without a mask on such a heavily polluted day, then don’t go running when it’s lightly polluted out.”13 All of this is to say that quite simply, exercising in city with air as polluted as Beijing’s can have serious implications on your health. Currently, aside from industrial and various lifestyle masks, there is nothing geared towards athletes who are most in need of protection from pollution. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/25426 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | en_US |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-US | en_US |
| dc.subject | Endurance athletes | en_US |
| dc.subject | Running | en_US |
| dc.subject | Air pollution | en_US |
| dc.subject | Air filtration masks | en_US |
| dc.title | AIRBENDER | en_US |
| dc.type | Terminal Project | en_US |