The AirPop Active + Halo is a real “ smart mask ” for your lungs

We follow our steps, our heartbeats, our sleep. Now, mask company AirPop has unveiled a companion product and app that tracks our breathing, air quality, and the effectiveness of our mask filter.

Do we really need more metrics to count?

AirPop founder Chris Hosmer says, in fact, yes.

“It’s an added dimension to understanding what’s healthy,” Hosmer said. “Breathing is actually a really vital part not only of physical health, but of our psychological or emotional health as well.”

AirPop makes the masks suitable for both daily wear and exercise. They are made from sports equipment materials, have sufficient structure to allow easier breathing, and use replaceable filters. His most recent product, the $ 149.99 Active +, adds a sensor he calls Halo to the mask, which monitors breathing, air quality, and filter efficiency, and feeds that data back to an app. companion. It will be available for purchase online in January 2021 and at select retailers early this year.

There are a lot of companies making masks these days, but AirPop has actually been in the game since 2015. Inspired by the dangers the unhealthy air of Shanghai posed to her newborn daughter, and her own desire not to leave this behind. air quality hamper its ability to leave. in racing, Hosmer founded AirPop in the hope of making a mask that is both effective and comfortable. It was just by accident (or foresight) that, thanks to the pandemic, the whole world started to need masks four years later. Fortunately, AirPop masks are designed to protect against pathogens (like the coronavirus), as well as against unhealthy air.

Other companies at CES this year, like Razer and Maskfone, have added electronic components to their masks and then called them “smart.” But the Active + Halo is actually like a fitness tracker for your lungs and environment. The fact that it can tell you when it’s time to change your filter based on your personalized usage (and not just a “bi-weekly” standard like other companies), seems particularly helpful; changing mask filters is an easy task to forget but extremely important to do if you want to wear a truly effective mask.

Mashable spoke with Hosmer about his experience as a mask maker in the midst of a pandemic and why he thinks we all really need a smart mask.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MASHABLE: You were a mask company before the whole world started wearing masks. How was the last year for you?

Chris Hosmer: The creation of our company was actually based on a broad mandate around respiratory protection for personal and public health. There are a number of different types of airborne threats – with pathogens being just one of them – but this just happens to be something the whole world is now very tuned in and has become a bit normal. So the last year has been a really interesting race.

MASHABLE: Is Active + more about preventing pathogens or improving air quality?

CH: From the start, we took a very robust approach to protection, so we protect ourselves from all three types of airborne threats. They are pathogens, as we are dealing with now and with the current pandemic. There are aerial ecological risks – it would be things like forest fires or dust storms, things of that nature. And then there’s human or human-made air pollution, like burning carbon from emissions from factories and things like that. So from the start we were really trying to cover all of these aspects. From a protection standpoint, it’s really all three.

MASHABLE: What’s behind the design?

CH: We see ourselves as a performance garment. We use a lot more clues of the clothing and the type of construction and materials you will find in high tech outerwear. Respiratory protection doesn’t have to be sexy. But if we can make a product that people think is really cool and that we want to wear, we can sort of overcome that kind of mental barrier.

MASHABLE: What makes the mask smart?

CH: The first thing is that we can track respiratory health. In this way, we can give consumers a real-time understanding of their number of breaths and breathing cycles, thus the rate in which they breathe and the volume of air they are moving. And it’s not something that has really been done before in the context of the consumer, so it allows us to begin to understand the role that breathing plays in our daily life as well as in our working life.

“We think masking – nasty as it is – is likely to grow as a category.”

Secondly, it provides a sort of filter management and status dashboard, which allows us to understand when, ultimately, we need to change our filters, as that is kind of a problem for most masks. . People don’t really know when they are supposed to change their filters or if they are supposed to change them. But because we understand your breathing behavior and the quality of your local air, as well as the type of geography you live in and some of your biometric data, we are able to calculate the life of your filter based on your use. … The mask that gives you feedback is not something that has never been done before.

The third thing we do is provide some kind of local air quality indexing. In Asia, checking your air quality is like checking the day’s weather. Understanding the quality of the air around you is really starting to figure in your day-to-day understanding of what’s healthy and what’s not. Using this metric, we are able to tell you the delta between the air you breathe and your ambient air. So how much better the air I breathe through the mask is than the unfiltered air outside.

MASHABLE: Being able to see the evidence in this “delta” between the difference in outdoor air quality and what you actually breathe through the mask seems truly rewarding. And more specific and personalized reminders to change your filter are clearly super helpful. But why is the breath something that people would want to follow?

CH: I developed this product mainly for myself because I’m a runner, and I had run a lot in Shanghai, but it was really dirty. So I wanted to be able to not only run in an environment that you really shouldn’t be exercising in, but also understand how my breathing played out in my heart rate and step count, and a lot of other things that I had followed. It’s an added dimension to understanding what’s healthy for me.

In the longer term, breathing is actually a really vital part not only of our physical health, but also of our psychological or emotional health. There is more understanding of the importance of breathing and the mechanics of breathing than ever before. So I think we’re following that trend and really giving users a more granular understanding of their breathing.

MASHABLE: Do you have a favorite metric or a metric that you check all the time?

CH: I always watch my “breaths per minute”. It’s a combination of me wearing it everyday just outside the house if I’m shopping or in town, as well as when I’m running, the same way you can watch your heart rate while resting and your active heart rate. This is the thing I always watch for the number of breaths. So in general, the fewer breaths per minute the better … you are more relaxed, you take deeper breaths using diaphragmatic breathing rather than shallow breathing. Of course, when you exercise, this number of breaths per minute increases a lot. So I’m still very interested in looking at breaths per minute as an indicator of overall health.

MASHABLE: Are masks here to stay even after Covid?

CH: I think North America is inspired by Asia. East Asia is a culture of wearing masks, not only because of the things that need to be filtered from their air, but also a culture of masking for hygiene and courtesy. I don’t think we’re there yet in the US, but what is true is that, as Covid has truly taken the world by storm, the global awareness of the need to protect against environmental risks from the air and social airline risks increased by a lot. So once Covid does die eventually, I think there will be this residual knowledge, and maybe a little trepidation if another outbreak occurs, or even more awareness of the air quality around. [us].

There has been quite a bit of science in recent years on ecotoxicity and how it affects low income communities as well as communities of color disproportionately compared to rich white communities. I think this disparity will continue to be discussed, and rightly so. And that’s an area we really want to focus on. This issue of social and racial equity will continue to be part of the conversation. So, unfortunately, we think masking – as nasty as it is – is likely to grow as a category. And we want to be able to provide the products that allow people to get back to their normal lives with minimal discomfort and minimal barriers.