Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out.
This Podcast is about Indoor Air Quality, Outdoor Air Quality, Ventilation, and Health in our homes, workplaces, and education settings.
And we already have many of the tools we need to make a difference.
The conversations we have and how we share this knowledge is the key to our success.
We speak with the leaders at the heart of this sector about them and their work, innovation and where this is all going.
Air quality is the single most significant environmental risk we face to our health and wellbeing, and its impacts on us, our friends, our families, and society are profound.
From housing to the workplace, education to healthcare, the quality of the air we breathe matters.
Air Quality Matters
Episodes
117 episodes
One Take #16 - The False Promise of Indoor Comfort: Why Current Building Standards May Be Harming Our Health
What if the very standards designed to keep us comfortable in buildings are actually making us unhealthy? This provocative question lies at the heart of groundbreaking research from Delft University of Technology.It challenges the funda...
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8:34
#87 - Maxime Interbrick: Street-Level Intelligence Is Changing How We See Cities
Is world of ambient air quality monitoring is in a deadlock. Despite having targets and technology, air pollution remains a persistent urban challenge. Why aren't things changing? This question drives Maxime Interbrick, co-founder o...
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Episode 87
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2:01:31
One Take #15 - Questioning the Questionnaire
Have you ever wondered how researchers measure something as subjective as your comfort in a building? The latest episode of Air Quality Matters takes a surprising step back from specific pollutants to examine one of the most fundamental yet ove...
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10:02
#86 - Sir Stephen Holgate: Beyond the Lungs: How Air Pollution Affects Your Entire Body
When we talk about air pollution, we often think of it as an environmental issue – something that affects our skies and lungs. But the reality is far more complex and concerning. What if I told you that the particles you breathe in right now co...
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Episode 86
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1:41:58
One Take #14 - Healthy Buildings Command Higher Rents, But Location Matters More
What's the true financial value of a healthier workplace? This episode of Air Quality Matters dives into research from the University of Cambridge that quantifies exactly how much companies are willing to pay for healthier office environments.<...
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8:37
#85 - Liam Bates : Clean Air, Clear Vision: Inside Air Quality Monitoring
The journey from visible smog in Beijing to sophisticated indoor air quality monitoring systems spans just a decade, but the transformation has been remarkable. In this eye-opening conversation, Liam Bates, CEO and co-founder of Kaiterra, share...
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Episode 85
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2:07:21
One Take #13 - Clean Air Crisis: A Breath Of Fresh Air Report
What happens when the UK's medical establishment declares air pollution a public health emergency? The Royal College of Physicians' latest report "A Breath of Fresh Air" delivers a wake-up call that transforms how we understand pollution's impa...
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10:56
#84 - Sarah Daly: Building Better: The Future of Sustainable Housing and Healthy Buildings
The gap between what we know and what we build has never been more troubling. While we have centuries of construction knowledge at our fingertips, today's housing often fails at the most fundamental levels of health, comfort, and efficiency.
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Episode 84
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1:07:15
One Take #12 - Pandemic Air Math: When Average Just Won't Cut It
We explore the scientific approach behind ASHRAE Standard 241, developed to address airborne infection control in buildings during profound uncertainty. The standard represents a paradigm shift in how engineers design ventilation systems to man...
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10:49
#83 - Andrew Sutton: The Long Game: Quality, Risk, and Scaling Sustainable Housing
Simon Jones sits down with Andrew Sutton, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at SERO, to explore the challenges and opportunities in retrofitting UK housing stock and how these parallel the challenges in ventilation and air quality.
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1:25:33
One Take #11 - Turning Low-Cost Air Quality Sensors into Compliance Tools
Lidia Morawska's paper provides a pragmatic framework for using low-cost PM2.5 sensors in regulatory indoor air quality monitoring, solving the longstanding problem of affordable compliance without sacrificing accuracy. This clever calibr...
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8:41
#82 - Vinod Kumar Sekar: From Healthcare to Hyderabad: Hosting ISIAC 2025
Microbiologist Vinod Kumar Sikar shares his journey of bridging the gap between microbiology and engineering to improve indoor air quality, particularly in healthcare settings throughout India. He explains how the Healthy Buildings Conference c...
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Episode 82
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1:20:28
One Take #10 - Invisible Danger, Visible Results: Democratizing Radon Measurement
Can you trust those affordable radon detectors? Do you really need to wait a whole year to know if your home has dangerous radon levels? The latest episode of Air Quality Matters tackles these critical questions through a deep dive into...
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8:54
#81 - Nathan Wood: The Ventilation Crisis Nobody's Talking About And How We Fix It?
"The lungs of our buildings are failing us." These sobering words from ventilation expert Nathan Wood capture the essence of a critical conversation about the silent crisis happening behind our walls. After inspecting countless vent...
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Episode 81
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1:34:54
One Take #9 - What Makes People Actually Use Air Quality Apps
What makes someone download an air quality monitoring app and actually keep using it? The answer might surprise you. In this eye-opening exploration of a fascinating study from Indonesia, we dive deep into the psychology behind env...
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9:35
#80 Abigail Whitehouse: When a child can't breathe, everything else stops.
What really happens in a child's body during a severe asthma attack? Dr. Abigail Whitehouse, pediatric respiratory consultant, takes us on a sobering journey through the physiology of asthma, beginning with a paramedic's memory of a late-night ...
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Episode 80
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1:26:06
One Take #8 - Passive House Reality Check
Gabriel Rojas and colleagues' comprehensive review examines indoor air quality in over 600 Passive Houses, revealing that properly-designed mechanical ventilation systems generally outperform conventional housing for background pollutants like ...
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11:27
#79 - Stefan Flagner: Clean Air Economics
The economic value of healthy buildings represents one of the greatest untapped frontiers in our quest for better indoor environments. While we've mastered the technical aspects of creating healthier spaces, convincing decision-makers to invest...
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Episode 79
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1:39:21
One Take #7 - Formaldehyde, Damp, and Mold in English Housing
We dive into a fascinating paper that quantifies respiratory disease burden from formaldehyde, damp and mold in English housing. Using Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) as a metric, researchers reveal the hidden health costs of poor housin...
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9:06
#78 Rob McLeod: 1,200 Classrooms Later: What We Learned About Air Quality in Schools ImpAQS
The landmark ImpAQS study examining ventilation and air quality in 1,200 Austrian schools reveals widespread failure to meet minimum standards, with at least 25% of classrooms unable to maintain acceptable CO2 levels during operational hours.&n...
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Episode 78
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1:44:10
One Take #6 - Maternal Air Pollution Exposure: How It Shapes Your Child's Respiratory Future
Research reveals that a mother's exposure to air pollution during pregnancy could significantly increases her child's risk of developing asthma, suggesting that our respiratory health journey begins before we take our first breath. ...
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7:51
#77 - Robert Bean: The Human Element and Building Better Spaces
Indoor environmental quality is about more than just air quality – it encompasses everything our sensory systems experience within built environments. This knowledge provides a framework for creating healthier, more human-centered buildings.
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Episode 77
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1:56:00
One Take #5 Clean Air, Full Classes
Research establishes a direct link between classroom air quality and student attendance rates through a comprehensive study of 144 classrooms across 31 Midwestern elementary schools. The findings provide compelling evidence that improved ventil...
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9:54
#76 - Erik Malmstrom: The Invisible Made Visible: Tracking Pathogens Through Buildings
Imagine if you could actually see how viruses and bacteria move through the air in a building. That's exactly what Safe Traces technology allows us to do, and the implications for public health and building performance are profound. In this eye...
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1:50:21
One Take #4 :Indoor Air Crisis in Global Social Housing
What happens when the air inside your home is slowly making you sick? For millions of people living in social housing across developing nations, this isn't a hypothetical question—it's daily reality.A review published in Applied Science...
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9:45