The world's first ink made with a pigment captured from air pollution has gone on sale this week, in the latest demonstration of the creative solutions artists and designers are employing to clean-up pollution hotspots around the world. Created by a team of scientists at Graviky Labs, a spin-off from MIT Media Labs, India-based AIR-INK produces ink made from unburned carbon soot collected from the exhaust pipes of cars, chimneys and generators in Bangalore, India. The soot is captured using a special device called the KAALINK, which fits on the end of exhausts to collect up to 93 per cent of the outgoing pollutants. t takes 45 minutes of car emissions captured by Graviky Labs' specially designed device to make 30ml of AIR-INK, enough to fill one pen. Pens, ink bottles and products decorated with AIR-INK designs are available to buy now on Graviky Lab's Kickstarter page, which aims to raise $14,000 to help the team scale production of the ink and refine its capture device. "Each stroke made with Air-Ink arrests particulate matter, which would have otherwise ended up in the lungs of common people," co-founder Anirudh Sharma said in a statement. "Scaling this is saving lives." AIR-INK has gathered support from the beer brand Tiger, which last year partnered with Graviky Labs to create 150 litres of the ink for street artists in Asia, who used it to create a host of murals. Air pollution is estimated to cause more than 7.2 million early deaths worldwide every year, and is a particular issue for urban centres in emerging economies such as India and China. Alongside government efforts to tackle the issue through stricter regulations on the use of coal and diesel, a number of artists and designers are turning their attention to tackling the problem. For example, Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde pioneered a process of compressing carbon in 2014 to make a range of smog jewellery, while Chinese performance artist Brother Nut spent 100 days collecting air pollution from the streets of Beijing with a vacuum before compressing particulates to create air pollution bricks in 2015.