Looking for that unique costume that will make heads turn at your Halloween party?<br /><br /> Then why not opt for a luminous cape created by UK-based artist and designer Kasia Molga? Composed of laser cut plastic glued to polycotton cloth, the cape turns red when you walk through a polluted zone. Its lights are calibrated to change depending on the information supplied by data collected around you. <br /><br /> Molga says she got her inspiration from a very personal experience: “It was a very hot summer, full of smog, I’d been sitting at the window and I got a really bad asthma attack for the first time in ten years. And that’s when I started thinking, ‘How can I convey the message that we are those human sensors which can sense different environmental changes in the air?’” <br /><br /> The project is being produced by commissioning organisation Invisible Dust, which works with artists and scientists to explore climate change and pollution. <br /><br /> Molga linked up with scientists at King’s College London to develop the clothing. Among them is air quality analyst Andrew Grieve. He is equipped with a monitor that demonstrates the difference in air quality in different parts of London.<br /><br /> “What we wanted to do on this project was make pollution visible, in a sense, and make it visible on the street where people are, where people are exposed, where the public is and really show people how pollution can change even from a junction to a park next to it,” he explains. <br /><br /> Back in his lab he checks the results of his brief walkabout. A graph shows the variations in pollution levels. Weather conditions make an obvious difference.<br /><br /> “You can see that just being closer to the traffic at the roundabout really gives you a significant kind of spike over what you experience even on the bridge. It was a very windy day today, but despite that wind we still saw some significant peaks closer to the traffic than we did further away,” he says. <br /><br /> According to researchers, while there is an obvious need to bring down general levels of harmful gases, highlighting the worst areas would give people a chance to exercise some control over their health.<br />
