BEIJING—Some pollution-weary Chinese consumers have moved beyond stocking up on home air purifiers and strap-on face masks and are now trying to breathe better with second-generation gadgets. Li Lingling, who lives in the central Chinese city of Changsha, recently bought a snorkel-like device from Broad Group’s Lung-Pro line, an armband air filter that feeds purified air to a face mask via a breathing tube. mask suffocates me if I wear it too long,” Ms. Li said about one of the more popular types of masks available in China. She liked the Mini Lung-Pro, which retails for 190 yuan ($29), so much that she bought five more for her friends, though she admitted the nose-to-arm apparatus does turn heads on the street. China’s economic slowdown has meant slightly better air across much of the country in the past year. Still, a greater awareness of air quality among the general population has spurred Chinese companies—both startups and more traditional conglomerates—to bring new products to the market.

The devices are aimed at reducing levels of PM2.5—fine particulate matter that penetrates deep into the lungs and is especially hazardous to human health. In a survey from market research firm Mintel last year, of 3,000 Internet users aged 20 to 49, 83% of respondents said they already owned face masks. Of those surveyed, 61% said they were “very concerned” about PM2.5. And the number of air purifiers sold in China nearly quadrupled between 2010 and 2015 to 4.4 million units, according to market-data provider Euromonitor. Now, “the concept and market for wearable devices has become quite popular,” says Neil Wang, managing director at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. There is little independent research on how well the new antipollution offerings work. “[Consumers] focus most on if a product works, and are willing to pay a bit more if the product is really proven to be effective,” said Lindi Li, a Mintel research analyst. Startup Beijing Zhongqing Technologies Co.’s CoClean looks like an amulet.

Its manufacturer says the device’s technology is based on ionization, which reduces particles in the air, and data mining, which combines user information and locations to give CoClean users diagnostics on a larger scale. The result is a 1 cubic meter breathing space with PM2.5 levels reduced by as much as 99%, according to Zhao Fei, an environmental scientist who worked with his fellow Tsinghua University alums and an engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, to create the CoClean. Homes For Sale In Ancaster Ontario CanadaIt can be worn on a necklace or be pinned to a shirt collar. Black Pug Puppies For Sale In Tn“The best distance from your nose is 20 to 30 centimeters,” said 31-year-old Mr. Zhao, 31. M&M T Shirt New York

He said Beijing Zhongqing Technologies has shipped more than 5,000 CoCleans since launching in October and has raised about 10 million yuan in two rounds of funding from Chinese venture capitalists. The 799-yuan device comes with a charging station that doubles as a laser-based PM2.5 monitor. “I wouldn’t say this replaces a mask,” Mr. Zhao said. “Our goal is to be a supplementary system to giant devices.” Mr. Wang of Frost & Sullivan said many traditional manufacturers are also jumping into the second-generation antipollution market. Broad Group, which makes the wearable Lung-Pro, is a large air-conditioner manufacturer known as the provider of air purifiers in Zhongnanhai, the Beijing compound that is home to China’s top leaders. It also offers a Lung-Pro that cleans the air inside a car. But the new wave of devices aren’t just wearable or for cars. Ecovacs, a Hong Kong-based robotics firm, introduced the Atmobot A630, an air-purification robot, in October with a sticker price of 6,999 yuan.

It works like the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner and can be connected to a smartphone. The company says the Atmobot can purify a home in about half the time it takes for an ordinary air purifier to do the job. An Ecovacs spokeswoman said about 1,000 units have sold so far. To be sure, with the average cost of an air purifier at more than $300, antipollution products are still a niche market. Analysts say upper-middle-class urbanites are the primary buyers. Antipollution innovation hasn’t been limited to just protection. Beijing residents Liam Bates and Jessica Lam, who are married, created the Origins Laser Egg—a portable air-quality measuring device—out of a desire to know how clean the air in their home was—not what a government reading station was saying miles away. Mr. Bates said some pollution sensors on e-commerce sites that claim to measure PM2.5 simply measure dust or the transparency of air. The Origins egg uses a laser that together with a photo sensor determines the size and concentration of particles in the air.

In a matter of seconds, it spits out an air-quality reading that can be calculated according to both official U.S. and Chinese standards, which vary on what levels of PM2.5 are considered healthy. The 499-yuan product is sold in Apple Inc.% outlets across China and in foreign grocery stores and lifestyle shops in Beijing. Mr. Bates, a former documentary filmmaker, said “tens of thousands” of laser eggs have sold so far. Meanwhile, back in Changsha, Ms. Li wears her Lung-Pro practically every day on her electric bike rides to and from work. To make the contraption a bit more trendy, she recently replaced the white mask with a purple one and let a friend paint cartoon characters on it. —Chen Chang contributed to this article. Deals of Note: Save on a Hi-fi Wireless Speaker, a Quilted J.Crew Jacket and More We're Accepting Fall/Winter Internship Applications The Best Movies Headed to Theaters This Fall Apple's Killed Off Another Key Feature. So Why Does This Feel Different?

Microscopic things invisible to the naked eye are everywhere — indoors and out. And if the EPA is to be believed, micron-sized pollutants rule the air in which we spend our days, especially inside where where pollutant levels are usually two to five times higher, but can reach a dystopic 100 times higher. This is cause for concern. The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS), an exhaustive study conducted by UC Berkeley’s Indoor Environment Department, found that most Americans spend 87 percent of their time indoors, on average. That means we breathe, for most of life, a lot of bad invisible things. To preserve your good health, the indoor air purifier comes to the rescue. For years, these little devices have been tucked away in corners behind plants, often in doctors’ offices, and they have always felt, to me, extraneous and mysterious. How bad is our air? Do these devices even make a difference? This doubt led to investigative lethargy, which, coupled with the units’ average costs of over $100 and prohibitory names like “GermGuardian,” led to my disregarding their purpose.

I’ll take the nasty air inside; I’ve always been fine enough breathing whatever it was I was breathing. Dyson Pure Cool Link Purifier Specs Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.3 x 40 inches Filter: 360° Glass HEPA filter Additional Features: Magnetic Remote, Smartphone App, Automatic and Night-Time Mode, Timer Dyson, the re-imaginer of hygienic house goods, thought differently. They identified the bad indoor air as a nemesis to health and committed their team of engineers to improving it. Their newly released oblong tower, the Pure Cool Link, is an air purifier that James Dyson, founder of his eponymous company, claims “automatically removes ultra-fine allergens, odors and pollutants from the indoor air.” And — for those working in the connected world — the fan/filter combo also gives “real-time air quality data back to you” on your smartphone. The machine stands 40 inches tall and has the sleek look of a hollowed-out, oval-shaped jet engine, and the company claims it’ll make the air 99.97 percent less allergen and pollutant populated.

I was intrigued, if not impressed. It stands 40 inches tall and has the sleek look of a hollowed-out, oval-shaped jet engine, and the company claims it’ll make the air 99.97 percent less allergen and pollutant populated. I plopped the purifier down next to my desk, set it on automatic, and let it work. After two weeks in the clean air stream, I gathered some noticeable take-aways. At base, it feels good to know that the air I’m breathing is classified by an app to be “clean.” Dyson partnered with Breezometer, a data analytics giant that focuses on air quality, to monitor the air quality through the machine and reflect that data in the Pure Cool’s app. It shows the results on a line graph of the day (or weeks, once the data is compiled). On average, our HQ in NYC breathes fairly good air, but in times when the purifier deemed the quality was dropping, the fan kicked in and started circulating air filtered through the glass HEPA filter — capturing and removing pollen, bacteria, allergens and other ultra-fine particles.

And then it also felt nice to know that when I did need a fan to cool me (often in the mornings after riding to work) the air blowing my way had endured a cleansing process. It may be minimal, but once you’ve had the clean stuff coming, pushing dirty air around seems as ridiculous as wiping down your counter with a soiled cloth. It’s too difficult to say that the purifier lessened my spring allergies, reduced the chance of asthma agitation or made my breathing any better. Yet, as an innocuous, well-designed fan, I like that it does one better than just circulating air — it cleans, then flings. And, it does so relatively silently. On the 1-10 scale of fan speed, anything 5 and below is nearly silent. The machine design and app interface is also very Dyson — clean, bug-free and luddite intuitive — and the purifier is not an eyesore. Considering it costs only $100 more than the company’s tower fan, it’s a small stretch to get debugged indoor air to breath for good health and, one can hope, long life.