Behind the Scenes at Atmotube’s IndieGoGo Campaign

Chris Stiffler, a young entrepreneur with asthma who was working on the problem of asthma triggers, died of an asthma attack almost two years ago, leaving behind a wife, two young children, a mother and a brother, and a dream of being able to predict his own attacks. After his death, some of his family and friends tried to continue his work, but failed. I was one of them.

However, Vera Kozyr and Igor Mikhnenko, two product developers who had met Chris at a pitch competition, went on to develop Atmotube, a product with the same purpose. It’s the world’s first wearable personal air quality monitor. Because of my interest in this area, I wanted to work with them, and I introduced them to some of the people in Chris’s network.

Vera and Igor sought to raise $52,000 on IndieGoGo. But within two weeks, they had not only raised their goal, but gone on to raise more. Yes, we did some good promotion, but I believe the product has raised that money because there is a proven market need.

People are concerned.

MIT’s Atmospheric Chemistry research tells us part of the story:

Poor air quality leads to the premature deaths of over 3 million people per year worldwide. Because of the rapid rate of urbanization in the developing world, this number is expected to rise dramatically over the next several decades. Air pollutants associated with negative health effects include ozone, fine particulate matter, and various other toxics. A large fraction of these pollutants are not emitted directly into the atmosphere, but rather are secondary in nature, formed in the atmosphere from chemical reactions of other compounds. Human exposure to these pollutants depends on a complex interplay of emissions, atmospheric reactivity, and transport; uncertainties in all of these limit our [ability] to formulate policies aimed at the effective prevention of air pollution.

In other words, we don’t even know what’s in our air, or how it got there. Nor do emissions respect national borders. Dangerous air escapes its industrial source and travels with weather currents. We are all breathing each other’s air.

Hence the rise in allergy and asthma rates as countries industrialize. Again, from two groups at MIT:

Breathing air with high concentrations of certain pollutants, such as ozone and fine particulate matter, can damage human health. Exposure to these pollutants can affect the cardiovascular and respiratory system, causing illnesses such as asthma and premature mortalities. Research in the Selin group links atmospheric chemistry modeling to impacts analysis, using integrated assessment models, to quantify the human health and economic impacts of air pollutants, and address the potential benefits of policies to control pollution. Research in the Barrett group assesses the human health impacts of aviation emissions, on regional to global scales.

Read between the lines. We don’t know yet what levels of which pollutants cause symptoms. That’s especially true because responses are individual.

However, we do know that in Delhi, which I visited in March of this year, the air quality is so bad on certain days that families are reconsidering whether they can raise their children there. Beijing is notorious for its poor air quality.

But Americans can’t sit by. Not only does poor air travel beyond national borders, but our own cities have pollution problems. More than half of people in the U.S. still breathe air dirty enough to cause health problems, according to an American Lung Association (ALA) report.

Among the worst: Los Angeles, Bakersfield, CA, Phoenix, Fresno, Salt Lake City.

People who live in those cities and others, especially the elderly, folks with children, and sufferers from respiratory problems, need more knowledge of their air quality, and more control over it. Atmotube, which allows you to monitor both indoor and outdoor air quality and can be clipped on a keyring or a child’s backpack, helps get that done. And that’s why people are willing to participate in the IndieGoGo campaign. They know. We all need to know.