Residents of the World's Most Polluted City Are Turning to 'Oxygen Cocktails' and 'Lung Teas'

Although Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia has just over one million residents, it has become the most polluted capital city in the world, surpassing Beijing and New Delhi, which both have more than 20 times the number of citizens. In December, when temperatures can plummet to -40 degrees, its levels of air pollution were five times worse than historically smoggy Beijing, largely due to the number of coal-burning stoves its poorest residents rely on.

The New York Times estimates that, in the worst of winter, a single Mongolian family can burn through more than 2,000 pounds of coal every month. Since the average temperatures are below freezing for seven months of the year, it’s not getting better, despite warnings and interventions from the World Health Organization (WHO). So many smog-choked residents are relying on alternative methods of getting non-tainted oxygen, like downing dubious sounding “oxygen cocktails.”

Agence France-Presse reports that Mongolians are turning to “oxygen-infused” drinks and “lung tea” to try to bolster their polluted bronchial tubes and get some protection from their own air. The agency says that advertisements for the probably ineffective drinks promise that “one oxygen cocktail is equal to a three-hour walk in a lush forest,” and grocery stores stock canned oxygen that swear they’ll turn ordinary glasses of juice into oxygen-rich cocktails.

Meanwhile, the manufacturers of so-called lung teas like Enkhjin, Ikh Taiga, and Dr. Baatar claim that their products will filter those pollutants out of their customers’ airways. “First it takes all the toxins out of the blood, then it turns the toxins in the lung into mucus, and all the plants in tea helps boost the human immune system," Baatar Chantsaldulam, the CEO of Dr. Baatar, said.

Although optimistic Mongolians—especially pregnant ones—are filling their shopping carts with these drinks, the WHO is less enthusiastic about them. “We don't have any scientific evidence whether they provide any benefit," Maria Neira, head of the WHO's public health department, told AFP. What the organization does know, she said, is that the only way to improve the citizens’ lung health is to reduce both the city’s air pollution and their exposure to that unbreathable air.

Unfortunately, that is becoming an increasingly difficult prospect. In the past 30 years, 20 percent of the entire population has made its way to Ulaanbaatar, and many of them are displaced farmers, herders, and rural residents who have come to the city to find work. They’re too desperate to live in the isolated Gobi Desert, but too poor to afford housing, so they live in gers, single-room tents heated by coal stoves that can be constructed—or deconstructed—in a couple of hours.

According to Newsweek, there are more than 180,000 gers in the city, and all of that coal (or wood or garbage can be burned to keep warm during those freezing winters) is responsible for the majority of the air pollution; WHO estimates that 80 percent of the pollutants in the air in Ulaanbaatar comes from ger stoves, compared to 10 percent from transportation, 6 percent from power plants, and 4 percent from “solid waste.”

The Times reports that in January, Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh announced that the transportation and use of raw coal in Ulaanbaatar will be banned after April 2019 (which many worry will cause another economic crisis among those who mine, sell and transport coal). Meanwhile, the Ulaanbaatar Clean Air Project is doing what it can to help, trying to replace ger residents’ coal stoves with cleaner, more energy-efficient models. It is also trying to lobby the government to pursue affordable permanent housing options for that demographic.

"Ulaanbaatar may be the coldest capital in the world but it doesn’t need to be the most polluted too,” Coralie Gevers, the World Bank’s Country Manager for Mongolia, said. “Improving air quality management in Ulaanbaatar and reducing pollution concentrations would prevent illnesses, save lives and avoid enormous health costs.”

It’s a problem that’s so much bigger than a canned oxygen cocktail.