NSERC Engage McGill-AirPura collaborative project on sustainable indoor air purification units

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Air pollution is a major environmental factor affecting human health and causing premature deaths in Canada**and around the world. In Canada specifically, indoor and outdoor air pollution is costing our national economy**billions of dollars per year, with the social costs even higher. Air pollution is a leading environmental cause of**cancer deaths, as concluded by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health**Organization (WHO). The adverse health effects of air pollution result from cardiovascular, pulmonary disease,**and cancer.**Indoor air pollution is an especially acute problem in Canada because due to our climate, Canadians spend**most of their time indoors. Air purifiers are a major solution to indoor air pollution. Outdoor air pollutants**infiltrate indoors and increase exposure to airborne pollutants in homes, offices and other buildings, adding to**the indoor sources of pollutants. To address the problem of indoor air pollution, we are establishing this novel**collaboration with one of the leading developers and manufacturers of high-end air purifiers, the**Montreal-based company Airpura. The two main objectives of this collaboration within the framework of**ENGAGE are:**1.To address the technological challenge of Airpura's existing technologies for air purification that must be**improved to increase capture efficiency of indoor airborne aldehydes and ketones, for which their current**enhanced activated-carbon/KMnO4/TiO2-UV technology has low decontamination performance.**2.Airpura is seeking to adopt sustainable technologies to become an industry leader, as the current**non-recyclable adsorption materials are standard industry-wide. We will perform selected tests with the newly**developed recyclable adsorbent systems to evaluate the potential for replacement or addition to the existing**technology with reduction of the traditional, less environmentally-friendly components.