Enabling the future of indoor air cleaning

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Exposure to contaminants in indoor air represent the single largest environmental health risk for most Canadians. Despite this known risk, indoor environments are resistant to policy solutions owing to the practical challenges of regulating private indoor environments. There is also a motivation gap as most of the health risk is chronic and outcomes emerge decades after exposure complicating the alignment of costs and benefits. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has focussed attention on indoor air cleaning solutions including ventilation and filtration. This increased attention has created an opportunity to meaningfully advance the science and practice of indoor air cleaning as the public, industry, and government are paying attention in a manner not seen historically. There are also new challenges including the proliferation of air cleaning technologies that are at best not effective and at worst harmful because of the emission of oxidants, byproducts and/or ions. The proposed research has the programmatic objectives of developing new scientific knowledge in the area of air cleaning and advancing the use of and motivation for air cleaning that will engage the public and decision makers and lead to a sustainable future for effective air cleaning technologies and techniques. An underlying aspect is the consideration of equity. In much of the world, safe indoor air is a commodity that is available to some but not to others. This project proposes an alternate framework where innovative air cleaning approaches are used as part of a strategy to address societal disparities. This research program is organized around four integrated short-term objectives. 1)Development and validation of an in-situ test for air cleaning approaches 2)Development of a measurement approach for total particle removal in an environment 3)Design and testing of new control strategies to optimize the performance of air cleaners 4)Assess the relationship between air cleaning and cognitive performance and decision making These objectives are all focussed on overcoming important barriers to the increased use of air cleaning and share several common elements including the use of low-cost pollutant sensors to ensure wide adoption, the inclusion of the importance that the indoor environmental context has on air cleaning performance, the consideration of primary and secondary impacts, the use of machine learning approaches to improve analysis and performance, and the reliance on interdisciplinary approaches to achieve goals. This research program will also train HQP in indoor air measurement, assessment, and improvement that are clearly needed in Canada. The outcomes from these objectives will be novel contributions to the field that allow specific air cleaning approaches to be appropriately valued and make air cleaning more reliable, effective, and available to all.