BY BRIAN FAIRBANKS

The Emergency Bra, a brassiere that can turn into two life-saving gas masks for victims of biological warfare won the 2009 Ig Nobel Public Health Prize. It just went on sale via this website, which describes the invention as “an “Emergency Bra, Nursing Bra, Two Face Masks [and] Strapless bra.”

The bra, available in sizes 32B to 40C, came as a result of Chernobyl. Seriously.

[Dr. Elena] Bodnar studied the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and found that, as Fox News reports, “if people had had cheap, readily available gas masks in the first hours after the disaster … they may have avoided breathing in Iodine-131, which causes radiation.” She also envisions it being useful in terrorist attacks. “You have to be prepared all the time, at any place, at any moment, and practically every woman wears a bra,” she said. [Salon]