STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

The 2028 Summer Olympics are coming to Los Angeles. And Serena Allen wants to make sure the athletes taking part in the summer games can compete in clean air so they can be the best they can be.

A Wild Gift fellow, she and her colleagues have created Air Vitalize, which uses ionization to clean the air. The technology causes air pollution particles to stick to the ionized particles, much like hair sticks to a balloon when the balloon is rubbed against the hair.

“The pollution clumps up,” she said.

Allen is one of several young entrepreneurs who took part in Wild Gift’s annual trek into the Chamberlain Basin area of the Boulder-White Clouds north of Ketchum this past month.

The Wild Gift program was founded by retired Sun Valley outfitter Bob Jonas to use the  challenges of being in the wilderness to inspire a new generation of leaders to make the world a more sustainable and equitable place.

Allen and the others backpacked for 16 days, spending the last two days in a yurt. They took part in a silent retreat partway through the trek; they sat and brainstormed solutions to their business challenges at other times.

Allen, who studied public policy at the University of Southern California, became interested in cleansing the air of pollution as she pondered the way minus-40 degree temperatures trap pollutants from the wood her fellow Fairbanks, Alaska, residents burn to heat their homes.

Temperature inversions in places like Boise and Salt Lake City also trap pollutants.

“People told me they couldn’t afford fresh food during winter unless they used wood to heat their homes,” she said. “When I realized that the world is not going to make its climate goals, I went back to college and asked some of the engineering students to help me.”

AirVitalize technology takes the shape of a 2-foot wide, 2-foot tall, 3-foot long box the size of a chest.

“A couple of these could be placed in stadiums to capture outdoor air pollution to make targeted healthy spaces outside,” Allen said.

Like some cities based in valleys, stadiums also act as little bowls that can trap pollutants. And Allen fears the problem will only grow worse as global temperatures rise. In fact, she says, stadiums can be among the least healthy outdoor spaces there is.

“During the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, some athletes collapsed because of the pollution.”

Los Angeles has cleaned up its act since the 1984 Olympics, but such pollution could make a comeback with extreme warming temperatures, Allen said.  The inversion ceiling in Los Angeles used to be 2,000 feet; now it’s 1000 feet.

AirVitalize technology could also be useful in low-income communities that are impacted by freeways running through them, the particulate matter taking as much as two years off people’s lives.

“It could be used in high-impact zones, such as schools,” she said.

Allen said the Wild Gift experience helped her brainstorm solutions to the challenges her work faces.

“The greatest innovative minds have historically gone on nature retreats,” she said. “And, at the end of the day, Wild Gift helped me remember what I’m fighting for.”