The steel plants and cement factories scattered across China’s Shandong Province have made it one of the most contaminated areas of the world’s biggest polluter, but for one company, that just makes the business climate better.
ASL Masks (安爽利) said it turned out more than 100,000 face coverings last year and aims to more than double that this year, as China struggles to shake off the toxic smog produced by its heavy industries.
At ASL’s Dongliu facility, shabby buildings bearing faded signs from the 1980s exhorting “scientific innovation” are just visible through the haze — pollution levels were six times international standards when AFP visited.
Dozens of middle-aged women wearing bright blue hats and aprons worked in near silence, sliding air filters into holes in the plastic products before threading on straps and yellow buckles.
“Smog is bad for the lungs. We all wear masks around here,” packager Chen Aimei said.
China is the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter and last year air quality in about 300 haze-hit Chinese cities failed to meet national standards.
Levels of PM2.5, tiny particles which can embed deep within the lungs, are usually above the WHO recommended maximum of 25 parts per million. In the northeastern city of Shenyang they reached more than 1,400 in November last year.
Public anger is mounting over the issue, but a wave of firms see silver linings to the smog, including air purifier and pollution monitor manufacturers, as well as mask makers.
Even when many Chinese factory workers had downed tools for the Lunar New Year holiday last month, chief executive Zhang Wenchao (張文超) kept his staff on until the last possible moment.
“December to April is our busiest period... because it’s the peak for pollution,” he said.
ASL started making industrial masks in the 1980s, but has since turned to the more lucrative anti-pollution equipment market.
Demand has grown as authorities have started releasing more data on the problem and state media estimate the Chinese pollution mask market was worth about 4 billion yuan (US$613 million) last year.
ASL has designed a product specially adapted for youngsters by measuring the faces of 100 children.
“People’s awareness of pollution protection is increasing all the time. People know that PM 2.5 is bad for them,” Zhang said.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) declared a “war on pollution” at the Communist-controlled National People’s Congress parliament two years ago. On Friday last week, a day before Li opened this year’s session, PM2.5 counts were more than 300 in Beijing.
Beijing and other cities in China issued their first ever “red alerts” for pollution this winter, banning half of all private cars from roads and advising some schools to close.
Shandong is the center of the industry, with another production hub, Dadian, dubbed the “mask village” for producing the cheapest specimens.
It can be a murky business. Dadian was hit by scandal last year when local media reported second-hand fabric used to make the masks was piled up beside fresh manure and slept in by stray dogs.
Customs officers in Shanghai in December last year said they had seized 120,000 fake respiratory masks, labeled as being made by US manufacturer 3M Co. In other cases, hospital masks have been washed and resold as new, reports said.
Zhang, 29, whose father bought ASL when it was an unprofitable state-owned enterprise in the 1990s, said he had amassed considerable wealth, but declined to go into detail.
Behind a large mahogany desk, he brandished his latest invention — an air filter which covers only the nose — and insisted he hoped efforts to reduce pollution would be effective, even at the expense of sales.
“We are like doctors looking at patients,” he said. “No doctor wants his patient to be sick.”
Still, Zhang does not expect demand to die. “Over the next decade, there will be efforts to improve the air quality,” he said. “But it won’t be completely improved.”
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