Babies Projected Onto Smog Become the Face of Chinese Air Pollution

image via youtube screen capture

Move over Batman, there’s a new signal piercing the night sky. Rather than summon a caped-crusader, though, these beams of light feature the faces of crying, gasping children in order to illustrate the very real dangers of China’s staggering level of air pollution.

Xiao Zhu, a Chinese company specializing in air purification units, has, reports Design Boom, been projecting the faces onto the plumes of smoke billowing from several factories across China. Given the widespread health problems caused by China’s infamously poor air quality, the “Breathe Again” campaign was created to “put a spotlight on air pollution’s biggest culprits—the factories—by using the actual pollution from the factories as a medium,” according to the project’s youtube description.

It’s a chilling reminder that what goes up into China’s air often comes down—and comes down hard—on those most vulnerable: Children.

This “Breathe Again” footage was uploaded to YouTube nearly a month ago, but it’s only in the last few days that people have begun to take notice. The Verge points out that whomever originally submitted the story to Design Boom did so under a username matching the twitter handle of a “creative partner” at Verawom (The Verge has them labeled as “Veracom”)—a Chinese digital and social media marketing firm.

Still, while the campaign may itself simply be a sophisticated advertisement for a line of locally-sold commercial air purifiers, the message it conveys is universal: “Clean the air. Let the future breathe again.”

[via @TheGreatDismal]