China Built A Huge Tower To Suck Smog Out Of The Air

Due to decades of fossil fuel abuse and horrible environmental policies, China’s air became one of the world’s most polluted. Smog in the country became so unbearable, in fact, that citizens were encouraged not to go out when it’s not necessary to avoid breathing in the dirty atmosphere. In an attempt to clean up its air, China built a giant tower that was intended to reduce the amount of smog in the country.

The tower, which is intended to act as a massive air filtration construct, cost Chinese authorities $2 million to build. In the grand scheme of things, this might not be a lot of money. However, the prototype could have a huge impact in actually addressing the matter of the severe air pollution in the nation, Futurism reports.

Standing at 60 feet in height, the giant chimney is located in Xian city. Using sunlight to essentially purify the air that it sucks in, the structure would breathe out clean air.

The idea is for the chimney to keep doing this over several cycles and after some time, the air will be tested to see if it’s making any difference. Leading the project is Cao Junji and according to Nature magazine, Cao says that the operation would cost about $30,000 per year. Again, it’s not that expensive in the grand scheme of things.

Such attempts at cleaning up the atmosphere have been tested by others in smaller scales. Unproven and untested, such a solution could actually cause more harm than good depending on how well it performs.

Constructing such monolithic structures is not exactly all that safe for the environment. If it is unable to provide more benefits than the issues its construction caused, it might not be worth moving forward with the project. At that point, China would be back to square one.