VIA MYFOXDC:
(MYFOX NATIONAL) – There is a new bra that can save your life and its creator hopes to have it on the market soon. Dr. Elena Bodnar, of Chicago, has designed the “Convertible Bra-Mask,” a bra that in an emergency can be turned into a pair of protective face masks. Each bra can help two people thanks to the two cups.
The Chicago Tribune explained that to use the bra-mask, the wearer unsnaps the brassiere and then it breaks it in two. Each cup has hooks on its side, so the strap is wrapped around the head and hooked to the cup, which goes over the mouth. ( See a photo of Bodnar with her invention .)
“The brilliance of my idea is that it’s very simple,” said Bodnar to The Tribune .
Bodnar spoke with WGN-Radio this week and detailed that the mask is “a personal protective device that provides a critical time window, enough for a person to immediately escape” a dangerous situation. She explained that she came up with the idea in 1986 after the Chernobyl nuclear accident and wanted a safety product that was “simple, economical, and always on you.”
“By using a bra-mask, a person can reduce the health consequences of inhaling harmful airborne particles, such as those released by natural disasters (like the dust storm in Australia two weeks ago) and human-made disasters, like a fire, explosion, terrorist radiological (dirty bomb), or biological attack,” she said in an interview with the University of Chicago student newspaper .
The bra could be available soon. Bodnar told the newspaper that the attention she has been getting suggests that demand for her product is high. Her plan is “to aggressively pursue commercialization.”
The bra-mask was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize on Oct.1. The Ig Nobels are Harvard University’s parody of the Nobel Prize, which the Annals of Improbable Research magazine gives out for achievements that “first make people laugh and then make them think.”
Bodnar was granted a patent for the bra in 2007 .
The bra-mask is a far cry from Victoria’s Secret Fantasy Bra (with a price tag of $3 million) , or the outrageous bras designed and worn by firefighters in Port Huron, Mich., to raise money to fight breast cancer.
