This shirt changes color based on pollution levels
One of the most disheartening things about urban living is that pollution can get so bad you can see it. But even if you're not living in smoggy cities like Los Angeles or New Delhi, there's still plenty of pollution you can't see.
Industrial designer Nikolas Bentel has designed a line of shirts called "Aerochromics" that appear light black in clean environments, but show their true colors whenever you enter an area with heavy pollution. There are three shirts in the line, and each one reacts to different types of pollution.
One shirt reacts to particulate matter, more commonly known as air pollution. Another reacts to carbon monoxide. And the last shirt, which isn't available for sale yet, reacts to concentrated radioactivity, like a fashionable Geiger counter.
The Verge reports that the shirt's dyes, which are heat-activated, change color according to two sensors: one in the front and the other in the back. When the sensors pick up a dangerous amount of pollutants around you, the shirt's heat pads activate, causing the temperature-sensitive dyes to change from black to white. When that happens, the shirt's pattern - stripes, dots or squiggles - is revealed.
Bentel told the Verge that his shirts are a "monitoring system" of sorts, a "sixth sense" that alerts other people to pollution in the area.
The clothing functions similarly to the canaries that coal miners once used to sniff out lethal, invisible fumes - though no animals were harmed during the making of these shirts.
The Aerochromics line creates enough of a statement piece to start a dialogue - if not about global pollution, then at least about your fashion sense.
The carbon monoxide and air pollution reactive shirts retail for $500 on Aerochromics. A line of non-reactive clothing with the same patterns are also available for $90 a pop.