Burning your bra is passe'.

Being a typical male, when I saw this headline it immediately caught my attention!

"Introducing the bra that is meant to be taken off!"

The first thing I thought was, "Geez, are we going back to burning bra's?"

Quickly dismissing this, I thought that perhaps it was some sort of sex aid, but that didn't hold water!

After a few more wild guesses I was no nearer the truth, so I clicked on the article to find out what was going on!

I never would have guessed!

It's a bra that doubles as a gas mask folks!

I kid you not!

The old "over the shoulder boulder holder" has now turned into a "must-have" accessory for the modern urban guerrilla.

This week the Annals of Improbable Research hosted its 19th First Annual Ig-Nobel Prize Ceremony.

As CNET News' Elinor Mills wrote, this year was no less ignoble than the previous 18, with such delightful discoveries as applications for panda poo and observations from a lifetime of knuckle cracking.

Except for one award: the gas mask bra, which, while ridiculous and hilarious at face value, has far more going on below the, ah, neckline.



Elena Bodnar, who lives in Chicago, got her start as a scientist in Ukraine, when she witnessed the devastating effects of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986. She noticed, among other things, that women were wearing bras that may have been lacy but were certainly not life-saving.

At the ceremony, Bodnar demonstrated her invention, which she said could have prevented people from breathing in Iodine-131 in the wake of Chernobyl.

A bra garment comprising: a plurality of detachable cup sections, each of the cup sections having: (a) a filter device; (b) a first portion positionable adjacent to a first central area of a user's chest; (c) a second portion positionable adjacent to a second outer area of the user's chest adjacent to an underarm; and (d) a valve device.

And for all the women out there who are worried about whether their cup size is too big or small to turn into effective gas masks: size, according to Bodnar, doesn't matter.


Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know......!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E! and H E R E! And as a paperback H E R E ! and H E R E !