 There may not be an air shortage — as in Mel Brooks’ 1987 classic, “Spaceballs” — but that hasn't stopped one Canadian company from selling canned air to pollution-wary Chinese citizens. As Beijing continues to suffer from a worsening smog problem, Canadian startup company Vitality Air has cashed in by selling “fresh clean air” from Banff National Park for $10-$20 a bottle. The company was born out of a jocular experiment in November 2014, when a group of friends wanted to see if a bag of air would sell online. The air pollution has reached a critical level in Beijing, forcing the city to invoke its first-ever red alert, closing schools and factories. Vitality Air China representative Harrison Wang says that their main customers are affluent Chinese women who purchase the cans for their families or to give away as gifts, according to The Telegraph. Lam said in order to collect the crisp air into canisters, employees venture to the mountainous region, Banff, in Canada, stay put for about 10 hours and then bring the bottles back to their headquarters in Edmonton, Alberta. As news of the red alert spread, the company took to Twitter to offer up their products. Cans range from containing up to 80 breaths to upwards of 200 breaths. But Lam says his company's products are more than a gimmick. #ChinaSmog pic.twitter.com/9wPWH090Ol — Vitality Air (@vitalityair) December 8, 2015 
 
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 Moses Lam and his business partner Troy Paquette founded Vitality Air in November 2014 after selling a plastic baggie of air on eBay. I don't think this is a play on desperate Chinese people — at the end of the day, people have the right to purchase whatever they want,” he said. “We're almost no different than the bottled water industry — you can get water out of a tap in China, but people would rather drink Evian or Dasani or other imported water, so why should air be any different?”
– It's come to this. Beijing's air pollution has gotten so bad—hitting red alert for the first time ever last week, prompting school and factory closures and restricting traffic for days, reports Weather.com—that some residents are not only staying indoors and wearing masks, they're buying fresh air in canisters from Canada. Vitality Air co-founder Moses Lam tells the New York Daily News that it all started on a whim in November 2014, when friends put a Ziploc baggie of air on eBay to see if it would sell. It did, and they figured if companies can bottle and distribute natural spring water, why not good old-fashioned air, too? Vitality Air was born, and employees began to trek out to the mountains around Banff, Canada, sit around with open bottles for 10 hours, and then head back to headquarters in Edmonton to bottle and mail the goods. They sell 7.7 liters, or as many as 200 breaths of fresh air, for $15, or roughly 100 yuan—which could fetch 50 bottles of mineral water—and recently sold 500 bottles across China in less than two weeks. A professor at Polytechnic University tells CNN that buyers are probably fooling themselves. "We need to filter out the particles, the invisible killers, from the air," he says. "One bottle of air wouldn't help. I would be very cautious." Still, Vitality Air's China rep tells the Telegraph that the company has found a niche market in affluent women, who tend to buy for their families and as gifts for friends. Other customers include nightclubs and retirement homes. The bottles are clearly not considered, ahem, gag gifts. (Check out the latest type of bottled water, infused with fat.)