I was poking a strip of those larger (about the size of two bars of soap) to pop them when a co-worker said “watch it, you’re breathing chinese air”. Ha ha. We all had a good chuckle over it.
But then I got to thinking (always a wonderful thing). These products are manufactured, packed in, and shipped from China. Could there be something, intentional of not, evil in these little balloons?
Beware Chinese shipping bubbles. :eek:
No, really. How about a flu bug or something chemical?
Peace,
mangeorge
larger … whats? You’re poking Chinese people?
Doubtful.
A) The air intake for the machine that makes them is probably on the roof, and I suspect that the likelihood of catching something from a source is related to the inverse square, like gravity or any other radiating effect.
B) Remember that a disease is a lifeform. While it might be able to survive a few minutes outside of a host, I doubt it will last the days it takes for the package to arrive.
C) (WAG) The larger packs, unlike bubble wrap, are quite possibly inflated by the packaging company rather than the manufacturer. If so, then when you get something from Amazon, the bubble has most likely been inflated in the US.
It’s pretty obvious if you read the entire post, but I’ll repeat “Chinese shipping bubbles”.
Like bubble wrap, only larger and in a strip.
Here’s a picture for the imaginally impaired. 
I think he is referring to those large, inflated, pillow-shaped balloons used in packaging. Instead of using styrofoam peanuts or paper, some people use these as fillers to keep contents from shifting in transit. They seem to have only come into common use recently. I had never seen one until a few years ago.
That being said, if the Chinese really wanted to, I suppose they could put nasty things into those bubbles. But, even if whatever they put in them did survive transit intact, they probably wouldn’t be terribly effective at spreading icky things. Maybe one person would get infected/hurt. Take that American pigs!
Also, what would China’s fast-expanding economy have to gain from killing off one of their largest customers?
ETA: Sage Rat pretty much covered all the unintentional causes, too. Besides, a lot of US air is just as gross and disgusting as the stuff they have in China. Sure, they have their extreme cases, but we have Gary, Indiana.
Yes it was obvious, but I couldn’t resist poking fun at you. Kind of like popping air bubbles is … 
Meanie!
The damage that could come from air pollution is the sort of thing that comes from decades of breathing in bad air every single breath.
I am a Peace Corps volunteer in China. Peace Corps is a very health conscious organization. If we get sick during our service, they have to pay all related medical costs for the rest of our lives. And they get a lot of bad PR, which is really harmful to the organization’s goals. So they pay very, very close attention to our health.
We get some training on how to deal with air pollution (basic stuff like don’t jog next to the freeway on a high pollution day) and those of us who go to cities with really bad air get HEPA filters to use at night. But in general they have determined that two years of exposure is unlikely to do any long term harm, even in some of China’s most polluted cities (I’ve heard I’m in the fifth most polluted city in China!) It’s along the line of smoking for a couple years- not good for you, but probably won’t kill you.
There aren’t currently any superflus or other bizarre pandemics sweeping across China. Bird flu is a concern, but you get that by hanging around birds, not factories. Anyway, China is a place that is pretty much like any other. Full of cities and farms and the occasional Ikea. It’s not some crazy land of festering disease. You are far more likely to get sick from your co-workers than from a few ounces of air that have traveled quite some way.
As for something intentional, the Chinese are not generally randomly murderous people. The product contamination we’ve seen is old school The Jungle style profits-over-safety that has existed in every country where industrial development has outpaced the ability to maintain oversight of it. It’s not the result of raving loonies wanting to go out and kill people. I doubt there would be some case where it would be cheaper to fill the balloons with some toxic product instead of air. So I think you are safe.
Relax and take the tin foil off your head.
The air pillows are inflated on site at where ever your product was shipped from. I have a good friend (and business associate) who owns a business that ships product all over the US. At his packing stations there is a machine suspended over the packing area. Above it is a large roll of flat (uninflated) plastic pillows. Coming out the bottom are the inflated pillows you are asking about.
He does not import air from China for this procedure, just uses what is in the warehouse. So if you buy from his company, you get air from near Reno Nevada.
ETA: From the OP’s link if you go here and select the first PDF you can see one of these machines.
So a nation that sent computer viruses in electronic photo frames couldn’t do the same thing with a biological agent.
Air from near Reno? So he’s in Sparks? Ewww!
They (the Chinese, or Nevadans) could put nanobots in there running nanopetris to keep the “bugs” alive.
The “why” is to exact revenge for the American tobacco companies passing out tons of free cigarette samples and hooking millions of peasants on nicotine.
Minden if you must know.