Thomas Talhelm shows people how to use the filters at a Smart Air Filters workshop in Beijing.

Taking their newfound data, Talhelm shared the findings with as many people as he could. Smart Air Filters started conducting workshops where Talhelm, Tate or someone from the team explains and shows people how to use the filters.

In about September of 2013, Talhelm returned to the University of Virginia to pursue his doctorate, and Tate took over the business.

"I just happened not to have a job at the time and I was trying to find a job as a Chinese teacher in the States. I don't remember if it was me that joked about doing this full time as my job," says Tate. "We continued the workshop thing, and it kind of fit into our plans. Everyone was thinking this could be a real thing, we could help people buy their own kits and make little kits for people to make their own filters and sell them online."

After building a website, Smart Air Filters started selling its DIY kits online. A basic DIY filtration kit includes a fan, a HEPA filter and a strap to put everything together. The kit costs about $33.

According to Tate, the filters are doing well and requests for workshops have been ongoing.

"We're trying to keep education as one of the main goals, aside from selling a lot of kits, we want people to know that this is a thing that they can do, like a China survival workshop," says Tate. "At this point word of mouth about the kits is doing more than one workshop at a time."