WP2: Real home survey
Survey of indoor air quality, occupant behaviour and health in real UK buildings
There is a lot we don’t know about how much we are exposed to harmful pollutants in our own homes. Working with the Born in Bradford family cohort study we will install pollution sensors in 300 homes across Bradford to measure the different air pollutants in homes, such as those from cooking and cleaning. We will explore differences in how much indoor air pollution families are exposed to and the effect on health. Once we’ve learnt more about what influences our exposure to indoor air pollution, we will provide advice to community members and decision makers on the changes they can make to improve air quality in the home.
WP2 co-lead (health)
Rosie is the director of the Born in Bradford research programme, following the lives of tens of thousands of families living in Bradford to explore why some families stay health and why others fall ill. Rosie is leading WP2a which will explore indoor air quality and health in 300 homes of Born in Bradford families. She is also contributing to WP6 aiming to co-produce ways of reducing exposure to indoor pollution with communities.
WP2 co-lead (air quality)
Jacqui leads WP2b that is focused on making measurements of the air quality within 300 homes in Bradford. She is responsible for understanding the chemical composition of different types of particle sources and to help identify which sources lead to poor indoor air quality. She also supports WP 1.
Ally works on better understanding the distribution and sources of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found inside homes. His lab collects air from each home, which is then returned to York for detailed chemical analysis. When this data is combined with information on ventilation, occupancy, building type and other activities going on inside the house, it can resolve which sources make the biggest impacts.
Rod and his colleagues at Cambridge work on the use of low cost sensors for measuring air pollution (gas phase and particulates) and CO2 in the environment and developing tools for their interpretation in order to relate personal behaviour and exposure to health impacts. His main focus is in WP2 and is to support the deployments across the BiB cohort to characterise indoor pollutant sources and to establish how these relate to activities (e.g. cooking, cleaning), building type (e.g. ‘leakiness’) and other factors such as meteorology.
Chiara leads the Cambridge unit which is involved in the measurements in people’s homes using low-cost sensors and the interventions to improve indoor air quality.
Gordon works on measuring particulate composition and properties, on modelling particulate formation and transformation and on understanding the impacts of various sorts of pollution on human health. His team helps characterise the particle composition in the homes sampled in WP2 and understand the transformation of indoor particulate pollution using models in WP4. He also leads a Clean Air consortium characterising the relative toxicity of different pollution sources, providing a "hazard ranking" and leads WP5 in Ingenious aiming to quantify health impacts of indoor air pollution.
Pete’s interests include the role of chlorine as an atmospheric oxidant, and his group make measurements of key chlorine containing compounds in order to quantify its impact. Many cleaning products can result in the release of chlorinated compounds to indoor atmospheres, and Pete will investigate this as part of the WP1 experiments. Pete also has an interest in low-cost air pollution sensor technologies, and will contribute to the WP2 sensor deployment.
Lia supports the deployments across the BiB cohort to characterise indoor air in homes and to investigate behavioural and environmental factors that affect exposure and health. She expands on the capabilities of low-cost sensor measurements by developing analytical techniques to maximise extracted information, including a novel source apportionment method of indoor sensor networks to characterise local emission sources, and reviewing how the low-cost sensor measurements can be used as proxies for more detailed measurements and indoor air quality in general.
Dr Yunqi Shao (Rikki)
Yunqi works on WP2, taking measurements of particulate matter from households in the BiB cohort and interpreting the results in the context of the household activity data. Yunqi will analyse samples by FIGAREO-CIMS and HR-TOF-AMS instrumentation to map the main sources of the particulate components, relating them to the physical, social and behavioural factors that control the pollutant distribution.
Tiffany is a Principal Research Fellow within the Born in Bradford research programme. She is contributing to WP2, which will assess indoor air quality and health within 300 BiB families, and WP6, which will work to co-produce strategies to reduce exposure to indoor air pollutants.
Ashish is part of the WP2b team that is focused on in-situ measurement of air quality in 300 homes in Bradford. He also works on the WP1 lab-based experiments for characterising and quantifying the emission rates of gaseous and particulate emissions from various indoor air activities like cooking and cleaning.
Athina Ruangkanit
Athina works on WP2b, which will take in-situ measurements of particulate matter from various sources in Bradford homes. She will analyse samples via 2DGC x ToF instrumentation for the purposes of characterisation and quantification of PM in residential environments.
Tom Warburton
Tom is a PhD student in the Chemistry Department at the University of York. He works on WP2b, which will collect 3-day air samples in vacuum-release canisters. Using indoor samples, and aligning with local, external canister measurements, he will analyse samples through GC-FID-QMS, characterising and quantifying individual gases within air samples. Samples will be grouped by air exchange rates (AER), which will allow a deeper understanding of how ventilation rates impacts VOC exposure.