A new research project to study indoor air pollutants and their effects has been awarded £3m from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
The 4-year project, involving Dr Chantelle Wood from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Psychology, aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of indoor air pollution, its key sources and the effects on health, particularly focusing on deprived areas.
The researchers will use their findings to make recommendations on interventions to improve indoor air quality.
In developed countries we spend 90 percent of our time indoors, the majority of this is in our homes. But despite this, most air pollution regulation and research on health impacts focuses on the outdoor environment.
Dr Chantelle Wood
Senior Lecturer in Psychology
“We’re working with the long-standing health cohort study Born in Bradford, to understand the social, economic and behavioural factors that impact indoor air quality in this ethnically diverse urban city. We know that air pollution in general leads to poor health - we want to raise awareness of how our behaviour may also be contributing to air pollution in your home, and how we can limit our exposure to pollutants.”
Air pollution in homes can come from everyday things such as wood burners, cooking, or using aerosols and cleaning sprays.
In the UK there is virtually no data which quantifies indoor air pollutant emissions, the movement of outdoor pollution indoors, or the social, economic or lifestyle factors that can lead to elevated indoor air pollutant exposures. Without a fundamental understanding of how air pollution is caused, transformed and distributed in UK homes, research aiming to develop behavioural, technical or policy interventions to reduce future air pollution exposure may have little impact, or even be counterproductive. This new research project aims to fill this gap in what we know about indoor air pollution by considering both the home and the human.
The project, INGENIOUS (UnderstandING the sourcEs, traNsformations and fates of IndOor air pollUtantS) will be led by the University of York and has been funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
