In the era of the digital world with umpteen devices and instruments, the thinking of people in terms of discovery and innovation has certainly increased in height and weight. Today, we have devices to detect even the slightest snoring of an individual and anti-snoring device to stop the same.

              Under the same light, a company in New York called ‘Aerochromics’ has designed a line of ‘smart’ shirts that change its color when detected with air pollutants. Yes, you read it right. The shirt changes its colors. As much as fun and exciting this ‘color shift’ is, the mechanism of the shift is very complicated.

             The company has designed three shirts of different working patterns for different environmental pollutants. The three pollutants are particle pollutants, carbon monoxide, and radioactivity.

             All the shirts have two small sensors, one on the front and one on the back. For instance, if the shirt comes in contact with particle pollution, the shirt activates heat pads. These pads change the white dots to black. In another case, if the shirt detects carbon-monoxide, this chemical reacts with the chemicals in the shirt’s dye turning the black stripes white.  

             However complicated the mechanism is, it is certainly true that the shirt leaves the wearer cautious about one’s surroundings. The shirts act as a medium between wearers and the environment and the message of ‘environmental threat’ is conveyed instantly. The designs of the shirts also stand out with the vibrant yet attractive colors.

            Turning the page, the shirt also carries a few disadvantages on its baggage. Firstly, the shirts are very difficult to access by most people for the very reason that the shirts are extremely expensive for just a shirt. It seems like the founder of Aerchromics, Nikolas Bentel didn’t think through quite well about the cost when he decided to design these shirts. Each shirt costs $500 which is more than 33,000 in Indian currency in the present day. This might curb the consumers from buying these shirts.

           Secondly, as much as refreshing the concept of these ‘smart’ shirts is ‘what next’ is a question that lingers around in every wearer’s mind. Although everybody is made cautious about a certain environment threat in a particular place, there is pretty much nothing that the wearer can do in reaction to the threat.  

          Shrugging away all the disadvantages, these indicator shirts are surely one of the creative inventions in the recent times. Inventions like this should definitely alarm the minds of people in India, especially for cities like Bengaluru which is becoming a hub of pollution currently.