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
Air Quality Matters
#31 - Douglas Booker: Bridging Socioeconomic Gaps in Indoor Air Quality - Environmental Justice, Community Involvement, and Sensor Technology
A Conversation with Douglas Booker
Join us in this thought-provoking episode of the Air Quality Matters podcast, where we uncover the hidden links between indoor air quality and environmental justice with, Douglas Booker.
A geographer, entrepreneur, and lecturer at the University of Leeds, Douglas dives deep into the unequal distribution of indoor air pollution and the urgent need for action despite gaps in our data.
From discussing socioeconomic factors to the pivotal role of community involvement in research, Douglas offers a perspective on how environmental justice issues ripple across air Quality.
Ever wondered why lower socioeconomic groups bear the brunt of poor indoor air quality? This episode tackles the complex web of procedural justice, highlighting disparities in indoor environments, especially in the UK.
Douglas shares insights from initiatives like Born in Bradford, which combine air quality data with health outcomes to drive meaningful interventions. We emphasize the importance of informed consent, improved product labelling, and the critical need for affected communities to have a say in policy-making, ensuring that any solution is both just and practical.
Douglas Booker LinkedIn
Douglas Booker Leeds
NAQTS
Clean Air Champions UK
Born In Bradford
Check out the Air Quality Matters website for more information, updates and more.
This Podcast is brought to you in partnership with.
21 Degrees
Lindab
Aico
Ultra Protect
InBiot
All great companies that share the podcast's passion for better air quality in the built environment. Supporting them helps support the show.
Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out, and I believe we already have many of the tools and much of the knowledge we need. The conversations we have and how we share this knowledge is the key to our success. I'm Simon Jones and this is episode 31 of the Air Quality Matters podcast, coming up a conversation with Douglas Booker, a geographer and entrepreneur with a focus on indoor air quality and environmental justice. He's a lecturer in indoor air at the University of Leeds, where he delivers research and teaching on the physical and social dimensions of air quality. Douglas runs NAQTS, a Lancaster Environment Centre co-located business that develops tools and technologies to provide holistic indoor air quality information. Douglas is also a UKRI Regional Clean Air Champion, a 42.5 million investment supporting research and innovation. In this role, he helps bring together research across engineering, atmospheric, medical and social science to develop practical and fair solutions for air quality challenges.
Simon:We discuss justice in the context of air quality and break down five critical pillars. Break down five critical pillars His work as a clean air champion and as an innovator and entrepreneur, from garage engineering to product innovation. Douglas is a brilliant communicator and breaks down in plain English a fascinating intersection between air quality and justice. Thanks for listening. As always, do check out the sponsors in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet. This is a conversation with Douglas Booker. I mean, how do you redistribute that unequalness, ultimately, of indoor air quality? It's a very big problem to solve, isn't it? Unequal distribution of outcomes when it comes to air quality?
Douglas:unequal distribution of outcomes when it comes to air quality. Yeah, so I presented five strands and ultimately they all probably come down to this question of distribution. So we might tease apart some answers for how to solve that by looking at some of those other mechanisms, whether it is about whose knowledge counts or the role of policy or who is misrecognized. So I would say on indoor air, the evidence for how indoor air pollution is distributed is much less clear than for outdoor air quality. There have been some nice modeling studies in London through groups at UCL which have demonstrated patterns by socioeconomic status, looking at things like outdoor air quality, tenure status, ventilation type, which demonstrate these patterns Broadly.
Douglas:Related to that point, I don't think we can wait until all of the facts are in on distributions of poor indoor air quality before acting. I think it becomes a bit of a case that we've seen for outdoor air pollution, where we get increasingly sophisticated and better evidence to show how bad air is in certain communities, which I think we really need to be looking at. Action now, when I think we've probably got enough of an understanding on where the outdoor air quality is bad and information on housing that it's much more likely that air pollution is bad in certain areas. So you know it is a challenging one because, as you said, there's lots of different potential levers. I think one of the principles which I fundamentally advocate for is that there and you see this a lot in citizen science type initiatives where there should be no research about us without us making sure that affected communities are strongly involved in any design and implementation of potential solutions to improve indoor air quality and I think this is important because it will minimize the likelihood of unintended consequences and making sure that designs actually work with affected communities and how they actually live their lives.
Douglas:I think there were a few parts to your question, simon. I don't know if there's anything there I didn't touch on.
Simon:Well, I suppose it's a big question. I mean you know that distribution of poor air quality outcomes like, I think instinctually, we know that must be the case because of poor housing or poor socioeconomic status or bad working environments in certain areas. And you know, and if you pull this out from the UK to a global level, I mean that becomes very clear in certain communities and certain parts of the world that the air quality outcomes can be very poorly distributed.
Simon:You know, talking to Priyanka Kulshreta about slums in Delhi and things like that and how moves up the socioeconomic strata can have as much of an impact as the systems you might be able to change on the ground systems you might be able to change on the ground.
Douglas:Yeah, all of a sudden you are able to escape the hum of the city by moving into better ventilated and filtrated spaces and, you know, potentially avoiding some of the most toxic exposures that you're talking about. I think it's important to mention at this stage. A lot of my framings around what constitutes environmental justice come very much from a uk, northern european and us perspective, because I think some of the challenges in low and middle income countries are different and, of course, again because justice is a normative concept. Actually what constitutes fair or unfair does change place to place, so I wouldn't wouldn't want to speak for those settings no, absolutely.
Simon:And you know imbalance and injustice is present in every part of the world and you shouldn't stop striving for justice, even if, comparatively, you might say some areas of the world suffer worse than others.
Simon:You know, um, how do you, how do we see that distribution manifesting? Uh, on the ground? Typically, I mean, the one that would spring to mind would be density of occupation in social housing so lack of space is a is a big one or social mobility, the inability to move and grow with your family as it as it grows, and being stuck because of affordable housing problems and those spaces just becoming incredibly dense in occupation can be a mass, can be a massive driver for outcomes when it comes to air quality, or investment in stock in social housing might be another one. Um, you know, our inkling is to look to social housing, but I guess it's not all there. That injustice exists everywhere, both in the private rented sector and in the owner occupied sector. We tend to zoom in a bit on social housing, and understandably so, um, and also because we've got somebody who's supposed to be responsible for large amounts of housing. But that injustice exists well outside of social housing, doesn't it?
Douglas:it does. You're quite right. Social housing, I think, has a clear focus in the uk for a couple of reasons. It's, you know, much more within the purview of potential regulation, or actually regulation that's come through in the uk. Um, and I'd be remiss to not talk of the case of Awabishak I'm sure this has come up on your podcast multiple times, of course the toddler who died from exposure to mold in his social housing association home and that really has thrust that sector into the limelight.
Douglas:And just returning again to those five strands that I brought up, if we look at Awab's case five strands that I brought up if we look at a WAB's case, well, in terms of distribution, it's pretty clear that they had an unacceptable level of mold in their home that far exceeded what other people were exposed to. If we look at procedure so the case of government regulation well, the social housing provider was hiding behind legal processes such as legal repair to have an excuse to not do anything about the problem. If we look at recognition, well, iwab's parents themselves said they had no doubt that they were treated this way because they were refugees and probably also because they were black. Look at capabilities well, they were blamed for the problem themselves in terms of their lifestyle, and they were told to not dry clothes indoors. Uh, that's not really a possibility in the northwest of england. I live there as well. Um, and they were told to paint over the problem, which of course wouldn't fix it, and everything about epistemic. The final one well, uh, the father had complained to the broad wide housing provider and was ignored, and his knowledge that his child's health was deteriorating was also ignored.
Douglas:So that's the primary reason, I think, why environmental justice is starting to look indoors and particularly why it's focusing on the social housing sector.
Douglas:But it will.
Douglas:There will be different levers that can be pulled in the private rental sector, but I think it's a bit more challenging.
Douglas:In terms of your first question around sort of distribution, and, yeah, you of course brought up the really important point that there's plenty of evidence to show that certain social groups, whether that's by socioeconomic status or something else, are more likely to be in more crowded indoor spaces. If we think about the good of the environment for a second, there's increasing evidence that, by socioeconomic status, those from a lower socioeconomic status background have less access to green space in their area, which means they tend to spend more time indoors, which means that's going to have a greater burden on their health. Already there's a myriad of factors which could point to potential maldistributions of indoor air and notwithstanding, of course, the reams of data we have on patterns of outdoor air, which of course will come into the indoor space, which we know is not shared in a fair way across the uk and is likely to lead to worse indoor air quality outcomes for certain more vulnerable, deprived parts of our communities can you separate that distribution well enough to target certain areas or communities or focuses of injustice?
Simon:um, so, do we have that good enough data as it stands to be able to say okay, as a society, we're going to take this seriously. Where do we start? Do we currently have enough information to say if Douglas Booker was in charge of this running the program, where would you start? Do we have a sense of that?
Douglas:I think we do. Is there some?
Simon:work to be done to really be able to focus in and go. Okay, here's where we can have an impact.
Douglas:More research can always support more precise, targeted interventions, but I'm firm in my belief that we have just good enough data and enough information to act already.
Douglas:There's a wealth of information on health inequalities in the UK and looking at social determinants of health which is happening at quite a localized level across the UK, which I think is enough information already to have targeted investments in improving air quality both indoors and outdoors in certain parts of the UK.
Douglas:Professor Sir Michael Marmot has been calling for more action on improving some of these social gradients in health, where those from the most deprived backgrounds are having the worst health outcomes, and I think that, relating this to indoor air quality, I think the part where we can be optimistic is that we don't need to deal with indoor air quality on its own.
Douglas:That can be packaged up into something much wider which is looking at the quality of housing in the area, the outdoor environment. So I don't think it becomes another message which we need to muddy the waters with saying indoor air is the only focus. It will be part of the social determinants of health in different parts of the country where there are already mechanisms in place to deal with this, whether it is through things like social prescription. So your GP, for example, might well. You could see that I think there are trials of this going on in other parts of the UK at the moment, but where maybe they can prescribe an indoor air quality audit for you or an air cleaner or any of these sort of targeted inventions which might make a big difference to health outcomes in more deprived communities.
Simon:Yeah, and there are great examples like Born in Bradford or Connected Bradford, where we're joining up all sorts of databases and outcomes, not just from air quality but from health and education to social outcomes, and pulling all of that together in a way that you can really understand where society is working and it's not, and how you might target interventions most intelligently. So air quality doesn't sit in a vacuum of social outcomes, does it?
Douglas:It sits in a very rich tapestry of all sorts of things that are going on, and that's the important thing to recognize, I think, from a justice perspective, is that it's it's not in isolation no, and I'm I'm pleased you brought up born in bradford, because one of the recommendations from the so we had the chief medical officers report in 2022 on air pollution, but there was one back in 2017 which also looked at social health inequalities, and one of their recommendations was to include socially disadvantaged groups in these large cohort epidemiological studies to make sure specific vulnerabilities are highlighted and addressed.
Simon:Yeah, no, absolutely. And when it comes to this procedural justice pillar, I think that's worth unpacking a little bit as to what that really means, because it's quite process orientated in its nature. But how do we see that failing people practically? So when we talk about procedural justice, I mean you raised our abishak, but you know, imagine, at all sorts of levels and it's you know, I'm guessing, a large part of the housing ombudsman's work is dealing with the procedural injustice of a lot of health outcomes in housing. But practically how? How does procedural justice manifest from an indoor air quality lens? Do you think?
Douglas:One of the key principles of things like procedural justice are concepts of informed consent, so making sure that people are aware of the risks and rewards of certain things before accepting them, whether that is explicit or perhaps more tacit. And I think some of the areas where we could think about procedural justice is in even including things like product labeling. So if you think at the moment all of the onus on the different products that are used within an indoor space and I'm aware I'm primarily talking about housing here, that's my biggest focus but it becomes on the home occupant. So they are putting these different products into their home and, quite frankly, have no idea what it's going to be doing for the indoor air chemistry. So there's certainly a role that the state can be playing there to make sure that these products are appropriately labeled so that people can make informed choices on the products they're using within an indoor space.
Douglas:As a fundamental principle underlying procedural justice for me is about making sure that both those people affected by the problems and involved in delivering the solutions are involved in the policy process from the start, so making sure that their specific concerns are heard and meaningfully included in the process of designing regulation. Process of designing regulation. Yeah now, how, how, that, how, that actually works for a topic as big and nebulous as indoor air. That's probably difficult for me to come up with right now. But if we were talking about a specific, specific part of that jigsaw which is indoor air quality, adjacent you know, then we can have a discussion how, the, how, the, how different groups is meaningfully able to contribute to designing that, that regulation which is going to impact their lives yeah, for me it's hard to wrap my head around.
Douglas:You know, I think at a high level it's a very difficult one to answer yeah, and there'll be many people much smarter than me who've written a lot on that.
Douglas:I think the underlying principle of, as you've said there again, sort of access to indoor air quality information is a key part of it.
Douglas:But I I think the other side of that coin is knowing the limitations of more, better information to different groups. Actually, there are certain cases where you could provide somebody with perfect information on what is required to have good indoor air quality within a space, but it again links up with this capabilities approach. Who is able to make that change? Which is why I really advocate for different voices being involved in that process so they can minimize the likelihood of any blind spots in the design of policy to make sure that those different capabilities are taken into account. But I think the other part of procedural justice that we've not really talked about is then the lines of communication. When things go wrong, who can make complaints and how, and how will their voice be heard in those disputes around the Social Housing Regulation Act in the UK, where I think it was quite unambiguous in where it placed responsibility Again, this is within the social housing sector, but for the role that different groups have in providing good indoor air quality and who is more and less responsible.
Simon:Yeah. So for listeners that aren't aware of that, there's been several crises that have led to some pretty staunch political action and the downstream effects of that has been the development of some pretty robust frameworks or positioning, I would say, on who's responsible, the kind of timeframes that you need to respond to things in. It's the. It's the first step on a very long pathway of starting to deal with a what is a very prolific problem in social housing. Um, it's fraught with unintended consequences, of course you know.
Simon:You only have to start looking in into it in detail to see that there are outcomes you may not want from going down certain directions. One of the big ones from the awabs law thing is is such a lot of pressure on reactiveness can limit proactiveness? So if an organization is already stripped of funds or under pressure and you start to really screw down on how you react to complaints and the time frames that you do that in and the outcomes that you need to deliver, it can, and the risk is, suck resources from proactively starting to sort some of these issues out. So those kind of things are really interesting to see strategically, when you look at things like procedural justice, how that actually works out on the ground. I'm guessing there's a much bigger part that can be played. I think you hinted at it that social sciences and citizen science, those kind of elements can bring to this party that we don't include enough in these conversations understanding how to engage with people on the ground and include them in part, include you.
Simon:You had a term, actually. What was it about?
Douglas:no, no research about us without us yeah, that's a really good one.
Simon:I must make a note of that.
Douglas:That's fantastic, but that's definitely one that I've heard elsewhere and borrowed, but, as with all good thoughts, yes, yeah, and I think you can probably apply that to a lot of things.
Simon:actually, I think it's really good. One of the other pillars that you talk about is recognition. How big a problem is that the ways in which certain communities experience indoor air quality, or how their opinions or views might be devalued? You mentioned, I mean, ishaq, is an extreme case, but not isolated, but a good example of that recognition problem that a refugee, perhaps with limited language, that's perceived in a certain way of of um, lifestyles and cooking habits and all of that, all of that baggage that goes with that. It would it be tropey to say it could boil down to racism and socio-economic classes and all the usual, or is it much more complicated than that?
Douglas:Well, things like racism and classism are complicated things in themselves and I don't think it's tropey to say that they have a role in these misrecognitions which lead to cases of environmental injustice, misrecognitions which lead to cases of environmental injustice. Now, the evidence in the UK and the EU for how air pollution is shared across different races or social classes well, let's talk races to begin with is much less clear than, for example, in the US, but I don't think that means it doesn't exist. It might just be manifesting in slightly different ways or overlapping with things like socioeconomic status. And I'm, of course, aware in this conversation that we're pining on important things like race as two white men, but I think if you were to talk with many members of different black communities, they would be able to tell you the different ways that they have been stigmatized because of the color of their skin or other groups, for forms of social difference Going back in time a bit, just for one form of misrecognition that perhaps people are familiar with within the indoor space, which was actually based on gender.
Douglas:You can look at some of the early claims around sick building syndrome, again coming from the US, and which was primarily coming from women who were complaining of certain health symptoms that they were blaming on the building, whether that be related to poor ventilation or off-gassing of certain parts of the building or use of certain products.
Douglas:And originally those claims were dismissed by federal toxicologists because they weren't able to measure any, at that time, component of indoor air that was harmful for health at harmful concentrations. So those women were often portrayed as being the sort of trope around hysterical housewives. So there's one case that I think we can probably relate to within the indoor space that we've heard about. But I certainly don't think it's a trope to think that social variables such as race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status or class, the way certain groups are dealt with, and you know, and those biases, whether they be implicit or explicit, do find their ways into policy, because policy is made by people. And I mean, as I said, the evidence in the US has been much clearer that, for example, polluting facilities tend to be put in black neighborhoods, which underpins, you know, the real birth of environmental justice as a concept, and I think it's naive to think that those things don't exist in the UK or still play a role. The question will be to what extent? And then what are the actual levers that can improve those negative outcomes.
Simon:Yeah, yeah, no, and it's a difficult one to navigate, as you say, say, two middle-class white men on a podcast talking about inequalities. But it's a political issue now as well, and that this it's a. It's one that people find themselves tiptoeing through with the, with the, the railing against wokeism and the, the, the, the class divides that you see in some societies it's, it becomes thorny and prickly to deal with, but it's obvious in its presentation when you look at it at a broad scale. I'm just wondering, from a practical level, how you recognise that on the ground. What are the kind of mechanisms and things that we can have in place that can protect against that recognition, injustice, um, and should they be? Should they be?
Douglas:I'm guessing again, our air quality is not in isolation here that this is something much broader in society that we have to be able to handle again, I feel I feel like a broken record and it feels perhaps overly simplistic, but for me it's really making sure that those are affected by potential problems, in this case poor indoor air quality, are involved meaningfully in the discussion. I think and I come from a scientific perspective here a bit more hubris on the role of professional scientists to understand that they don't have all of the answers and that actually there is a lot that they can learn with from affected communities, whether that is based on different social class or race, or a combination of the two race or a combination of the two. So I think ultimately many of these well, scientists and affected communities in principle want the same thing. But I think it's a role of partnership in making sure that the evidence that science is producing aligns with the lived experiences of affected communities or contributes to actually improving outcomes in those areas, rather than just measuring and reporting on poor air quality, because that can have some pretty significant unintended consequences if not done carefully.
Douglas:Now I realize in this process I'm probably oversimplifying the quest for partnerships between what we'd call a transdisciplinary approach, between all of the different sectors involved in delivering the solutions, whether that be affected communities, science, business, business and industry NGOs policy, think that is the approach that needs to be really needs to be done to make sure that anything that is designed is is going to work on the ground and deliver the outcomes that we want. Because I mean, whilst we are seeing general improvements in air quality across the uk, this is for outdoors over the past what 30 years, there's a huge amount of evidence to show that that's not been equally felt. So most improvements in air quality happen faster in areas that are less deprived than more deprived. So these are the sorts of things where, if different voices are involved in the process, I think it can lead to better outcomes.
Simon:Yeah, and you said at the beginning, there's a lot of crossover between these kind of five pillars, as you described them, and with with recognition, you, you creep very quickly into capabilities as well, and you, you're kind of touching on that a little bit, how you, how you remove the barrier, barrier for disadvantaged communities, uh, from achieving good indoor air quality.
Simon:Um, is that, is that principally, education and knowledge, that you break those down with capabilities, or is it more? Am I oversimplifying it when, when we talk about instinctually, when you say capabilities, it's someone's ability to have the knowledge and the agency to do something about it? Is that an oversimplification or a misunderstanding of it?
Douglas:so information will be, will certainly be part of it. But one thing I always try to say is I think we have a over focus on questions of behavior change within your indoor air quality science community. But I think we need and that can come through better information on how to reduce your own emissions and exposures, and that's great and that's required. But, uh, behaviors are bounded by things such as the quality of the ventilation infrastructure you have within your building, the quality of outdoor air, many other things. So I think the point of capabilities is that you need to recognize that information or behavior change can only get you so far, and then you start to need to look at the other social and physical factors which are limiting people being able to actually achieve good indoor air quality. So that's when it does become a question of well, actually, we in certain sectors need to be monitoring and enforcing noncompliance with ventilation standards, for example, to make sure that it is actually up to spec ventilation standard, for example, to make sure that it is, that it is actually up to spec.
Simon:Yeah, yeah that I can't tell you how often I have that conversation, douglas. You know when we're talking about and when I'm working with housing providers, that this balance between the responsibilities of a housing provider to provide the infrastructure that allows somebody to exist and live in a home, and how you balance and offset that against the desire for habit change and behavior change and so on by occupiers of those spaces, that the two are inextricably linked, could be linked, and it's very difficult to to drive is probably too harsh a word, but to encourage behavior and habit change to to, because it is, you know, it does require that the effort of both stakeholders to get a good air quality outcome. It's very difficult to do that if you're not meeting your obligations in the first instance of providing decent ventilation. And that, for listeners, manifests itself very regularly in the, the kind of statement that I would hear from a tenant that says well, why would I turn the bathroom fan on? It's been replaced three times in the last four years. It didn't work the first time and it hasn't worked the last time. It makes a load of noise, doesn't do anything. Why? Why would I do that? Or why would I leave the trickle vents open? It doesn't make any difference. Um, it's that intersection of habit and behavior and use of a space and the capabilities of that space to be able to deliver what the building needs to.
Simon:I was in a. I was in an area of dublin there a few weeks ago, quite a well-known um tenement area of dublin, um, quite famous actually, and one of the things that struck me was talking to several single mothers of kids in very small tenement apartments. You'd never be allowed to build them that small now. But the sheer density of occupation and activity in those spaces and the effort tenants were putting in to keep on top of the place because they had to. If you didn't, the place would they had to, if you didn't, the place would just be a disaster area within days.
Simon:You know that they work so hard to clean and dust and spray and disinfect these environments because the, the building just physically wasn't capable of handling the level of activity. So you both had the, the capabilities of somebody to get a good outcome in that space, and then the unintended consequences of the activities that they were having to do to try and keep on top of it and you had incense burners going and bleach cleaning going on and fragrances in the air. You know you, you come out of the place with a headache, but it was their sense of what they needed to do to keep on top of it. Um, and that's how this manifests. Is this capabilities thing? Isn't it that the practical outcomes of how somebody actually delivers a change in their own environment?
Douglas:it even comes down to simple things like time and effort. If you're from a more deprived background, your life might be much more stressful and you'll be dealing with other, more acute concerns and, quite frankly, at that point indoor air quality becomes a concern for the rich. When you're more worried about putting food on the table or working your in many cases multiple jobs to provide for your family, at that point it quickly slips off the radar as an issue of importance, particularly if you've had challenges getting anything actually resolved. Things are new fans, as you say, put in the bathroom which still don't work or provide anything better, and at that point it becomes much easier and takes less mental energy to mask any odours.
Douglas:I can completely empathise with that position and, moreover, you know, things like incense come up a lot, and I think this is a communication challenge for air quality sciences that we're often seen to be providing the evidence for moratorium on things that we enjoy in indoor spaces, whether that is candles or incense or wood burners. You know we're not always the most popular bunch. I can say that with my own partner where I uh I obviously strongly uh recommend to not use some of these sorts of products, and I win on some of those arguments, on lose on others yeah, and welcome to the world of risk communication.
Simon:You know it's, it's. You know risk tolerate tolerable risk is a difficult one to navigate. Actually, this week I had Sotirius Papathanassio on, who's a great communicator around indoor air quality, and we were laughing because he was making himself concurrently unpopular with vast swathes of the mediterranean because he was basically looking to ban wood burning stoves and barbecues. Um, because of risks of exposure. You know it's. Um, it's a difficult one to navigate when you're taking away. I still get in trouble in my own home because I decommissioned our two lovely wood burning stoves about five years ago and every winter I get it in the neck that that electric version, or the, the conversion to electric, just doesn't do the same thing. But you know it's.
Douglas:It's. I mean, this is a. This is a fundamental challenge for air quality science of what are we ultimately hoping to achieve in terms of the quality of the air, because there's always going to be stuff in it. You know what concentrations are acceptable, what activities are permissible, because I often talk about this in terms of indoor air quality, because I often talk about this in terms of indoor air quality, a home with no odor and no air in it, zero air, zero hydrocarbons that doesn't sound particularly nice to me either, even if that technically might lead to better health outcomes. So it's sort of what level are we saying is better for population level health effects, which also allows some of the social practices that we love and like to practice to actually continue.
Douglas:I think for activities such as wood burning, there's an easier discussion on that because of the significant effects it's having on other vulnerable breathers beyond your own household. We sort of get into the political philosophy of liberty versus security here, but you know these thoughts are implicit in terms of a lot of air quality research and policy. Yeah, it really speaks to this. You can see how it clearly links into fairness, right.
Simon:Yeah, and really speaks to kind of epistemic justice, how you communicate that and and how people navigate that. Um, because it is complex. I mean the goal I guess has ultimately got to get is to get this place into a space where we are having luxurious conversations about the nuance and balance of risk of behavior and certain pollution outcomes. You know that would be a great place to be because at the moment that's not the case for a lot of people. There are clearly air quality outcomes that are having significant impacts on health and reducing you know, you look at the dahlies of this the disability-adjusted life years for those that don't understand, that's the years lost to early death and disability because of health outcomes. So at a population level, there are sectors of our community whose lives are being significantly shortened and their health outcomes significantly disimproved by some of this stuff. So there's some low-hanging fruit that we can address.
Douglas:Absolutely. I mean, I've talked about pleasurable components but there's pretty strong evidence and apologies, everything I'm talking about is UK, but that's where I'm based is on damp and mould in the uk from the youth health uh uk health security agency. You know, in terms of dallys it's, it's really significant and that, as you say, that's low-hanging fruit in terms of I think you can get public buy-in on improving aspects of insulation and ventilation will lead to better outcomes and better social lives for many people. That is low-hanging.
Simon:Yeah, no, absolutely, and I've been getting more and more robust about this over the last few years.
Simon:I firmly believe now we're at a point where ventilation is becoming a consumer protection problem, that we're simply not getting what we're paying for at a at a civil society level.
Simon:Um, every time this is looked at and I mean every time this is looked at, we're just not delivering adequate ventilation into most of our built environment, and that's a problem.
Simon:That's a fundamental problem that we can fix, and many of the problems that we're talking about here can be solved with adequate background ventilation and decent local exhaust ventilation and providing people with the ability to purge the spaces that they're in effectively. All of these fundamental pillars of ventilation are just not being done well enough and it is costing people their lives and health and well-being as a result. And we're just going to have to get more and more robust about that and recognize and this was the other question I had for you is that we've spoken a lot about the principles, but the world is changing as well, and technology and our ability to look at data is changing. We're seeing the spaces within our built environment like we've never seen them before, aren't we? And that changes everything, because it's now not just an anecdotal nuanced conversation around health outcomes and confounding factors. The data is there, front and center, and we can see when spaces aren't performing.
Douglas:Yeah, look, the advances in low-cost sensor technology for indoor air quality have really exploded over the last 10 years. I set up a business around 10 years ago called NAQTS to raise awareness of indoor air quality through providing actionable data. At that moment in time, there were quite few devices on the market, which is why I set my company up. You look now and there's just a huge array of different devices that you can use. I was particularly pleased to see that you had AirGradient on, because I am a big fan of their open source approach, particularly with my justice lens on, because you can really understand what is happening on the sensor surface. But also I think it's a good model to get researchers working with different communities. But it's not just for indoor air, of course. You've got a huge open source databases like OpenAQ that are, particularly for places such as the continent of Africa, really helping to build up some of the evidence on poor air quality across the continent. I would always say, with indoor air quality monitors though and I feel I'm a good person to say this having a company that develops them is that they are not a silver bullet if we're thinking about environmental justice, and this has come up. So, first off, they can be a really powerful tool Just keep that in mind whilst I'm saying the negative and then we can come back to the positives is that, unless their data is accepted by those that are making the decisions, they can actually just perpetuate what people have called a data treadmill of requiring more and more evidence of harm to actually lead to any action. Because, for example, in some of the fieldwork I've done working with citizen science groups, did one in liverpool with a group called better old swamp who made measurements indoors and outdoors of a variety of different pollutants, went to their local policy maker who said we've got, we've got no way to use this data. It's not collected in the regulated way, it's not using the regulatory sensors, so we don't recognize it. So this is where, again, I think this transdisciplinary approach, where you are bringing together affected communities, researchers, policy, so that you can actually develop the right technologies that can lead to actual changes. So making sure that communities can make their measurements and have a productive dialogue with policymakers.
Douglas:Or, for example, again, social housing providers. I've been involved in a few different projects with some of the largest social housing providers across the Northwest who have been providing their tenants with low cost sensors, which is great. That's part of the asset management strategy for them as a social housing provider, so they can target those houses that they see as most underperforming. But it also provides the tenants with some confidence or means to sort of power their voice to say I've got some evidence. Now something doesn't seem right. It's matching up with my experience that the place seemed a bit stuffy and smelly. Here's the CO2 data. What can be done about this? What sort of extra measurements can then come in afterwards to really see what the problem is? So, in sort of in summary, I think these sensors can provide valuable tools for different groups, being able to promote what they see as their air quality concerns and provide evidence that can support change. But it really has to be done in conjunction with those that have more power.
Simon:Otherwise low-cost sensors can just be dismissed because they are not the standard way of doing things yeah, I think it's a really interesting point and I have a lot of dialogue, um in my day-to-day with companies that do just that. And I think one of the interesting things about business being involved in this, not not just academia, is that business has to prove the use case, the value, um. This isn't just a perpetual hamster wheel of need for further research that academia can fall into, that they genuinely have to find ways of providing actionable insight, both for all stakeholders, otherwise they don't have a business model, frankly, and they don't survive. And social housing, interestingly, has been one of the spaces that's been making the most success out of this, because they've found ways to use low-cost sensor data to genuinely provide value to different parties, different stakeholders. That means there are sas models and revenue models and business relationships being built on the basis of that data actually providing value. Um, and that's really interesting to me that you can spot void risk and condensation risk or evidence the efficacy of a retrofit intervention, or you can provide information to a tenant in a way in plain English that helps them make the right decisions based on the data Done well, it has the potential to answer or help. A lot of that epistemic question of it brings some of the data and the science into those conversation and into the hands of people trying to make decisions.
Simon:And, as I increasingly point out to people, if you're an organization and you're not doing this, increasingly tenants and occupiers of buildings are doing it of their own volition and, whether or not that sensor that they're using you question or not, you're having to answer different questions now than you were five or six years ago, you know, and they're uncomfortable questions to answer. If you're a housing provider, because whether you believe, whether you believe that data or not, you're now answering a question based on performance outcomes of a space that you now have to counter and it becomes a really difficult place to be really quickly if a tenant is turning around to you and saying look, my bedroom is 3 500 parts per million every night. Here's pictures of me with the trickle vents open and an undercut under the door. Something's not right in my house. You know it's a very different place to be if you're a housing provider.
Simon:Um, I've had conversations with developers where it becomes a consumer protection problem that the people are saying we've bought a product off you that you said would perform in such and such a way. Here's the data to say it's not an A-rated home and we're uncomfortable. You know, and here's some data. What are you going to do about it? It's an interesting place.
Douglas:The built environment very quickly in that, in that, in that space yeah, whether or whether or not it's the housing provider or the developer, sort of management by surprise is bad management. So any approach where I think you can be working with the occupants of those spaces to, I think you know, give them sensors. I think it can often help them with their approach to ensure the quality of their building stock, add an extra value proposition for them on the if it's certainly from the developer perspective of added level of quality, but really build up confidence for people buying those homes or living in those spaces that they not only are more likely to have better indoor air quality but they're going to have a mechanism to improve it. If it isn't through those sensors and evidence, of course, it's a really basic point.
Douglas:This model we'll be talking about is probably more applicable to social housing provided spaces. It seems much, much clearer. But there's always the economic argument for these in terms of how accessible these innovations are to different communities. And even though some of these devices are what we call low cost, you know, if it's a one, two, one 200 pound sensor which you can get some good ones, that's quite a lot of money to some people. So that's where I think you will really be wanting the targeted support whether that is coming through housing or local government to, or even the nhs, to empower different groups to be able to make these measurements but also understand what they mean and how they can act on it, whether that is related to changing their own behaviours or, just as importantly, perhaps more importantly knowing who to talk to to get things fixed.
Simon:Yeah, I wonder if anybody's done the library model yet. I know in Ireland we did that very successfully with energy kits that were available from your library. You could go home with a basic thermal imaging camera and some tools to look at energy performance in your own home. You wonder if there's a kind of a civil society level thing that you could do to make this kind of technology available to people in different spaces that there was. There's packs that someone could borrow from their local services for a month to see what's going on in their space. Be interesting, wouldn't it?
Douglas:yeah, I've not come across. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but that certainly sounds like a nice approach, and one that is community led, working with the right people. That'll be one that I scribble down after this and go and have a look and see if I can find something, but it's a nice idea island they do something with energy monitoring for properties.
Simon:Um, I'm not. I can't remember what's in the kit now, but it's definitely includes a thermal imaging camera, but you could. So if they can do that, it'd be very easy to put a low-cost sensor and some good information about the kind of things to think about and a diary to keep, and you know, you make it quite citizen sciencey. I bet somebody's doing something like that somewhere probably probably around co2.
Simon:Considering so many of them were, sensors were rolled out during covid I did want to talk about what you're doing, douglas, as well, because you're um, you're an indoor air quality champion, um, and I think it'd be really interesting to discuss that and your work more broadly, because I know you've recently made a move to Leeds as well as Electra, so perhaps explain a little bit to listeners how you got into this space of air quality and found yourself ultimately becoming an air quality champion for one of the regions of the UK.
Douglas:Yeah, Well, let's see if I can put together a convincing story of my past 10 years. So I set up my company, naqts, in 2015. It's a family business between me, my father and my uncle. My father is an aerosol scientist and my uncle is an electrical and mechanical engineer, and my background was originally in political science. I did my undergrad in politics and history and a master's in public policy, and my father and uncle had spent a long time working in the vehicle emissions space, particularly on the devices which measure pollution at the tailpipe. So you might remember the listeners might remember the Volkswagen diesel gate scandal. These were the sorts of devices which we used to show the difference between the measurements that were happening in a controlled lab environment and then in the real world. And I had just finished my undergrad and went to spend a few months living with my father in the US where he lives, and, as all good companies that are formed on some form of science, we started playing around in the basement with some of these emissions devices and I noticed a number of articles talking about indoor air quality and had become quite interested in it because I saw a real market opportunity to sort of a market discontinuity where there was an increased awareness of indoor air and sort of this recognition that something should be done about it. But nobody was really taking ownership and through doing a bit of research I thought we could make some real positive impact in terms of providing in air quality information in indoor spaces. Now, working with a engineering within an engineering family that I can, that got them quite excited. So in the basement we went and mocked up a prototype of what a instrument might look like to measure a variety of different pollutants all of the main ones that are coming from indoor sources as well as outdoor air pollution coming in, and the business started. I had no grand vision, I think, to ever be an entrepreneur. It just kind of happened and we were originally based in the Southeast and we were showcasing the equipment at an Innovate UK workshop and Lancaster University had reps there and thought you should come and show the equipment. There's quite a number of people working on air quality at Lancaster that would be interested. So we went up, liked the equipment, I moved the business up there.
Douglas:Serendipity has played a very big part in the growth of the company and my own professional career and being in the department and having this interest on questions of justice and fairness. I mean, I wrote my master's thesis on the Volkswagen scandal, so the sort of fairness argument was quite important to me. To me, and by pure luck, down the corridor was Professor Gordon Walker, who was one of the most authoritative voices on environmental justice research in the UK, so knocked on his door and said can I do a PhD with you? I need to have a think what it might look like. And that's what sort of got me going in terms of thinking about setting up the business and my specific focus on justice related to air quality. So I spent seven years very long seven years, balancing, doing a part-time PhD, which was using the equipment my company made, but then working with different schools and community groups to generate some evidence and do some theorizing around justice in the indoor environment evidence and do some theorizing around justice in the indoor environment. And I finished that late last year and felt that I had an academic itch that still needed to be scratched. You know, after spending seven years doing it, I felt relatively established, in a way because I'd been doing it for so long, albeit in a part-time capacity, in a way because I'd been doing it for so long, albeit in a part-time capacity. So and I noticed a position had come up as a lecturer in indoor air at the University of Leeds and thought, well, I might have an interesting story I can tell there. I've got quite a blended approach across the social and physical dimensions, so put an application in, was successful and have recently joined, so very much still getting my feet under the table, but we'll be looking to see how I can really maximize some of the linkages between the environmental science, social science and I'm based within a civil engineering school, so the engineering side of things to really provide a holistic perspective.
Douglas:In terms of the Clean Air Champion role, now this comes through something called a Strategic Priority Fund, so this is a, as it says name on the tin.
Douglas:It's a UK investment in research and innovation in a strategic area that was around clean air and there was a £42 half million pound investment from the uk government on clean air research and as part of that they have a clean air champions team and our job is to really make sure that research across atmospheric science, medical science, social science, which is focused around developing practical and fair solutions for air quality issues, to make sure those disciplines were working together but also then more broadly linked up with those beyond research to really focus on the impact, and a big part of my role within that group is I'm a regional champion for the Northwest and West Midlands is on knowledge transfer.
Douglas:So making sure that the people in my areas are aware of what's going on within the Clean Air Program, but also vice versa, making sure the Clean Air Program is aware of the actions that are happening outside of research, such as through business. That was one of, I think, the sort of key things that I brought to the team a commercial background, but also a focus on indoor air, making sure that the program is aware of what is happening in sort of the wider community.
Simon:That's really interesting. And how does that manifest practically, this knowledge transfer? Because it's a word that's often used in a range of circles. I'm involved in the International Energy Agency and part of that is about knowledge transfer at a national level, but that can take up all sorts of different forms. So is there a, is there a center of information that you're using and have at your disposal to try and transfer that knowledge into your region? Transfer that knowledge into your region is, is it organized in a way that there's kind of workshops and conferences and things that that help with that knowledge transfer? What? How does that clean air champions network actually manifest practically?
Douglas:so there is a hub of information on the clean air program website, but we also run a variety of different engagement events, whether that be workshops or conferences.
Douglas:So, for example, we have a knowledge exchange group which involves many of the different organizations outside of traditional research that are going to have a role in disseminating this information, for example, so making sure they are aligned with what's going on so they can really amplify some of those messages. There is a Clean Air Conference in October in Birmingham later this year, which will be bringing together a lot of the different funded projects through the Clean Air Program. So knowledge exchange isn't just between research and other groups, research and other groups but also between research itself to really make sure that, as much as possible, we're minimizing any duplication and making sure that different groups are working together, thinking about this more holistically. Otherwise, it's an inherent problem within indoor air quality research is that a lot of it is project-based, making measurements in X number of indoor environments over Y length of time, and they're not always connected up with another project which is funded, measuring somewhere different, measuring something slightly different, for, you know, making sure that those research projects are aligned.
Simon:So, for example, in terms of sharing methods, trying to as much as uh ensure that you're measuring similar things in similar ways with similar protocols, because that's a really important part of the scientific evidence generation for indoor air making sure that different data sets are comparable to build up a better picture yeah, no, and it's one of the biggest complaints is the lack of interdisciplinary, joined up thinking and the siloing that happens not just between the disciplines but between even academic institutions, that there's so much going on in parallel, and I know both you and I have been involved in conversations around things like the indoor air quality observatory and whether things can be done at a more organized level to try and bring this stuff together. It's so important, um, because it was so much more powerful together. It's fascinating work. Is that something that's done for a period of time, or do you have like a a run at this for a few years and then it's looked at again? How does it work?
Douglas:so one of the existential questions for clean air research is that the clean air program finishes I think it's october next year, so my, I think I'll have been in the post for three years when it ends and then it's thinking about what next. Um, I think from a funder's perspective, there are, there are other programs that have champions as well, and it's been an approach which has worked quite well to have some people that are within the research community but able to link up across the different projects so they can speak the language of the different research groups but make sure they are communicating with each other in an effective way and really complementing each other's research. But as of next year, one of the things that we're discussing at this conference in October is what next? One of the things that the Clean Air Programme funded was six transdisciplinary networks looking at everything from air quality in schools to air quality for vulnerable people to in different modes of transport.
Douglas:So a lot of investment has been made and it feels a bit fuzzy but in building up the connections between different people involved in the air quality system. So those relationships exist, but it will just be thinking about. Do we need something more formalized for those relationships to exist within? Or is there some body that already exists that might be able to host that, that can really maximize the impact with other groups outside of research? But these are unresolved questions at the moment. But as the Clean Air Programme gets into its last year or so, I think the question of legacy is a key one, thinking really strongly on what evidence have we generated, what have we learned and what next?
Simon:Yeah, I suppose it would be remiss of us not to mention COVID at some point in this conversation, because I imagine it factored quite heavily in that work, but also environmental justice. You know, when we talk about unequal impacts in different parts of society.
Simon:Covid was the extreme example of that, wasn't it? Um? So I imagine that's I mean we took. We don't talk about it as nauseam on the podcast, but it certainly factors because it is such recent history. Um, covid must have had a really big impact in your tenure, both as a clean air champion, but I imagine also has factored into your phd and your research on environmental justice, I guess well, let's talk practicals before the bigger point.
Douglas:So, in terms of my phd research, I had a project measuring the indoor air quality in 20 schools around the UK and we installed monitors January 2020. And before we knew it, we were measuring the air quality of empty classrooms and I had a lot of capital equipment deployed that I couldn't get my hands on, which, of course, I was using from my company. So that was a head scratcher From the Clean Air Champion perspective in terms of practicalities. Well, you know, it's obviously been. The silver lining of what was a, and still is, a traumatic experience is that it's at least putting the air they breathe in different indoor spaces, and that really has to be an important point that we take forward.
Douglas:In terms of specific vulnerabilities, I mean typically around indoor air quality, airborne viruses have been their own thing. Before COVID. They weren't one of the sort of common pollutants that many people from an air quality perspective were talking about. It obviously comes up in terms of ventilation and perhaps here I'm showing the sort of how siloed different research communities are, so the air quality and ventilation aren't always connected. They're different groups.
Douglas:But yeah, it's obviously had a huge impact on different claims of environmental justice indoors. I don't think the evidence is very concrete there, but of course just the lasting implications of the wave of people suffering from long COVID and how that's socially distributed, meaning people are spending more time in indoor spaces. There's sort of that aspect as well that you know we weren't going out and mixing as much In terms of theorizing what is fair there. I mean, that's one for me to take away and have a think about and it'd be great for the listeners to think get to us on that as well as what they think is a fair approach to dealing with airborne virus transmission and the effects of things like COVID. But it's certainly a challenge, but it obviously as well links up to things like effective ventilation provision. Many of the things that we are talking about in terms of mitigating environmental injustices related to broader air quality will also align with airborne virus transmission and broader health inequalities yeah, yeah, I mean it.
Simon:It it's a. It's just a very specific air quality problem. Covid, was that amplified a lot of probably the injustices that exist for broader air quality? That include socioeconomic and health statuses, density of occupation and of the built environment? You know access to information and you know it runs through like a whole lot. I mean, I imagine, a lot of the topics that we've spoken about lot of the, the topics that we've spoken about.
Douglas:I um, I hinted at the sort of frustration I had from a technology deployment during my phd field work, and part of the and I wrote about this during my phd part of the adaptation was that you measure, we're measuring lots of things. Many of the key things you'd want to measure for looking at covid airborne transmission risk was that all of a sudden, many of the primary sources of poor indoor air quality that we were thinking about within schools changed and all of a sudden, people were the main polluter, and that's quite a fundamental change in terms of strategies for responsibility, which really does complicate some of the normative arguments, I think yeah, no, totally yeah and really brings into play how we use the principles of risk management in spaces as well.
Simon:you know that we can lean on that we and we had to in the covid pandemic for me was a a real open eye opener on how you can lean on basic principles of risk control and hierarchies of control when you've got uncertainty in outcomes. Actually, we've got some pretty solid mechanisms for managing risk that we can lean on. That can be really powerful Because we've been doing it for years. You know risk is something that we've been very good at as human beings of trying to manage, so we've got some pretty good systems in place for dealing with it. I did want to talk about your, your technology, cause I've had a few conversations with you, douglas, about it's NAQTS, isn't it the? Does that stand for something? Firstly, because that's probably the first question people were going to ask is where did naqts come from?
Douglas:does it be so? National air quality testing services? Now, we're obviously much better at making technological devices than naming companies. I, since we set the business up in 2015, I've seen many other people enter the market with much better names.
Simon:Yeah we're naming aside, um, I I think actually what it is that you do. It is, um, a really interesting proposition because it it incorporates both low-cost sensors and what I would call the middle tier and some lab-style approaches, let's say, for recording air quality. So is that born out of where this idea was born out of? That? You had an aerosol scientist, an engineer and, uh, yourself sitting down and going okay, blank piece of paper, what do we want to measure? How are we going to do it? What does that look like? And you ended up a good example of a product that's born out of science and engineering. Um, because it's. It's quite unique, isn't it the product that you have? And the not so much the business model, but the idea of what you do with that hardware, and so maybe explain to people what the product is? Um, and that kind of concept of deployment that you have for the product, because it's it's quite different to what a lot of people would see in the marketplace, isn't't it?
Douglas:Yeah, our core product is called the V2000. And the underlying principle for us is we wanted to be able to provide actionable air quality information and for us a key part of that is essentially measuring as many things as possible that can provide valuable data. So we've positioned ourselves in between what you might call a low-cost sensor and a regulatory grade device such as an outdoor air quality monitoring station. So our approach, rather than, for example, installing 20 of a low-cost sensor, is to go for fewer of these higher-grade sensors, one that we call a lower-cost device. It's not low-cost but lower-cost. That's measuring things with an increased level of precision but also focusing on some of the pollutants that we're unmatched within the market in terms of providing in a single device. So, for example, we're measuring all of the sorts of typical pollutants that you'd expect in a other indoor air quality sensor, probably using the same sensors that other companies are using. There are many that are de facto used. So we measure PM 2.5, we measure CO2, we measure temperature pressure, relative humidity with the plant towers, the Bosches you know all of the spec sensors, sensors, sensors people that are involved in sensors will be familiar with all of these devices. Through providing two extra measurements Forgot to mention. We also measure CO, no2, ozone with electrochemical sensors because we want to know all of the possible sources of poor indoor air.
Douglas:But we also measure ultrafine particles. That was the actual beginning of the device. It was a device to measure particles indoors. So, looking at all the different sizes of PM because these ultrafine, so 100 nanometers and smaller compared to PM 2.5, which is 2.5 microns these are the ones that are so small they can translocate into the bloodstream and get into every organ of the body.
Douglas:They're currently unregulated in air quality, although they are regulated at the tailpipe, which I always find quite amusing the difference between emissions and air quality. But these are hypothesized to be worse for health effects because they can get into every organ of the body. Now, for the first time, in the last update of the air quality guidance by the World Health Organization, they actually did include indicative levels for ultrafines, which has been a game changer for us in terms of having much more confidence to say what is a good or bad concentration of these pollutants. So that's one extra thing we measure, and these are important because they do not correlate with PM2.5. So you might have an environment that shows very low PM2.5, but there are extremely high concentrations of ultrafines.
Simon:So we have IP, so you're not doing this with optical sensors, then this is something you're doing with something else no.
Douglas:So it is an optical sensor. So the sensors that measure PM2.5, don't want to get too deep into the aerosol science here they're called optical particle counters. Now the aerosol scientists can say no, they're not, they're nephelometers. But I'll keep it simple. They work by passing a single particle past the laser and counting it one particle, two particle, three particle. The device we developed and these have been around for 50 years called a condensation particle counter. Now the particles we're measuring are so small they can't be seen under any visible wavelengths of light. So the first stage is you use the particle as a condensation nuclei, like how a cloud works. You condense a solvent onto it, it gets bigger. You passed it past a laser one particle, two particles, three particles. So there's just that initial stage. And that initial stage adds complication in terms of measurement, making sure you're growing particles to the right size and not just forming particles that are based on the condensing fluid, so they're not actual air pollution. So that's an added level of complication. But it is an optical technique, well-characterized and around for a long time, essentially a cloud generator.
Douglas:And the second level of measurement that we provide is speciated VOCs. Now VOCs are of critical importance in indoor environments. Many of the low-cost sensors provide indicative total VOC measurements, which are useful for trends and not much else. So what we provide and this comes very much from our co-location at Lancaster University we thought well, actually what is going to be helpful from a research perspective is a sensor might tell you that there's 300 micrograms per meter cubed of TVOC.
Douglas:Well, what is it? That could be irrelevant or extremely relevant if it's of a carcinogenic compound. So we have space in our equipment to have thermal desorption tubes, so tubes where you can trap VOCs onto them, send them to a lab and then get a report back saying exactly which compounds are in the air and at what concentration. So measuring lots of things. The plus side is it provides more information that can target specific sources of poor indoor air quality. The downside is that you're not going to be installing these sorts of sensors continuously over multi-year periods, so our deployment strategy is very much based more on a shorter snapshot, whether that be, we typically suggest a minimum of three weeks across heating and cooling seasons. Um, of course, as with any of these deployments, it's a how long is a piece of strain you?
Douglas:the longer you can measure, the better, but that's what we suggest but it's going to be anywhere from three weeks to a few months to provide sort of information over that period and then targets and suggestions for how you might improve the indora so this is where your, your model is unique, um, in comparison to the kind of the low-cost sensor market.
Simon:But that has some crossovers in that there's, you know, data available online and dashboards and things like that. This is more of a leased product or that kind of crossover into consultancy services where you provide a piece of equipment, it goes in and then you provide some help in interpreting that data. And take, how does somebody, for example, what happens with the diffusion tubes and things like that that are collecting speciated vocs? Does that come back with the equipment or are those kind of taken out and sent off and new ones put in while it's in place? Is there a kind of how does it practically work this? Does this thing kind of arrive in a box or with the technician? How does the the process.
Douglas:Okay, depends on the customer and their level of technical savvy. We find ourselves working with a lot of companies that are research adjacent. So, quite frankly, you want to make the measurements themselves. So we just typically, for a new customer, will hand deliver the equipment and provide some basic training and support, and then let them go out and take the measurements and help interpret any of the data as they're doing it for the first time. But as customers are getting more familiar with the equipment, it's uh, we can ship the equipment to them and they know what they're doing and they go out and fill their boots with the sort of volumes of environmental data they can collect yeah, interesting.
Simon:Yeah, yeah, it's a. It's a fascinating. It answers that question that isn't being answered by low cost sensors.
Douglas:I think in that no, I mean we tried to yeah yeah, I mean, I think low cost sensors are incredibly powerful as long as they're used correctly, and I mean the v2000 device that I've described also includes low cost sensors within it. Um, and again, to mention AirGradient, one of the things that I particularly like is that they provide the raw data. So with all of our customers as well, we do exactly the same, because anybody who makes measurement everybody trusts an air quality measurement, apart from the person making the measurement. And if I don't know how a sensor is getting to a value, I don't believe it. I've got to see what is happening on the sensor surface to say, okay, this is how you have gone from a change in voltage on a sensor surface to a reported pollution concentration. Otherwise it's a black box, and black boxes can spit out random numbers.
Simon:Yes, and it's an interesting conundrum because there's not many of you around, so not a lot of people have that capability to be able to interpret that raw data or to understand where there might be a risk in that raw data. Um, so I think it's, you know it's. It's an interesting one. That open source element, you know, I had had a keen on from air grade and it was a very interesting conversation about the, the pros and cons of open sourcing, and without question you certainly start to involve the, the reddit kind of geek community, into what you're doing and that that kind of co-development of software and firmware becomes very powerful and so on. So it's a really fascinating concept, that one. But I think, interestingly, I think, as we understand the capabilities and limitations of low-cost centres and that kind of productised product, we're already seeing the sector, particularly the real estate sector, starting to then struggle with how they answer the more complex and nuanced questions that that data provides you with. So we see Well, and others AirRated, starting to say, well, it's fine to have low cost sensors, but how are you calibrating devices? Are we doing speciated tests once a year? Are we, you know, is there a mix of low cost sensing and more advanced sensing. But where does that balance sit?
Simon:I often use the analogy of health wearables, that low cost sensors are a bit like your Garmin on your wrist that are useful for patterns and blood pressure and pulse rate and things. But if you want to know what your health's like, you probably need to go to the doctor once in a while and get a blood test. And similarly, with low cost sensors, they give an idea of trends and things that are going on. But at some point you probably either need a product like yours or an occupational hygienist or a lab test of something to go right.
Simon:Okay, I'm like you say I'm seeing vocs, but what exactly? You know that I see these spikes on a monday. Probably better figure out at some point what they are on a monday, you know, because not a lot of spaces are going to be able to root cause the source of air quality pollutant without including a professional at some point or something that can measure it. So I think that's an interesting growth. Part of the market is both people starting to recognize the limitations of low cost sensors and what next? Answering the what next question but equally how that sensor technology is coming down in cost and changing as well.
Douglas:Yeah.
Simon:You know how that evolves over the next year, what that middle tier looks like and if it breaks up into lower middle tier and higher middle tier products in some way, be interesting to see.
Douglas:yeah, I mean, I think I said earlier that low cost sensors are powerful but not a silver bullet. But if they are used in the sort of screening way that you've mentioned, it can be a really powerful part of improving indoor air quality in a variety of settings. And that shouldn't be discounted, as you know, because they're not as accurate as a ten thousand pound or a hundred thousand pound device. That's, that's really valuable information for those that are perhaps responsible for improving those indoor environments to know where to to target the more expensive resource, whether that is equipment or an occupational hygienist yeah, no, absolutely.
Simon:Um, you and I are involved in a policy thinking thing there a few weeks ago, um, but I think it's probably an interesting question to ask you again now, because we're actually a lot of parts of the world or in a period of change in government, it would appear. Um, what next for the uk, do you think as a air quality champion? Um, as somebody that's involved in business in this sector, um, that's been involved and got an interest in the social justice element, what's your advice to the next government, or what do you think is next for the UK broadly when it comes to air quality? Where would you like to see things changing for the better?
Douglas:Focusing on the indoor environment.
Douglas:I think the net zero agenda is a really important one where we need to be ensuring that buildings are not just compatible with our climate targets but also in terms of public health, and I think that is a really key place and you know, I mentioned earlier the challenge of indoor air quality, not really sitting within one branch of government, but the challenge of net zero is one that I think it should be aligning itself to, because that is where some of the biggest changes in the building stock are going to happen under, and I think it's a really important opportunity for air quality and public health to align with some of the actions that are already going on to make sure that things aren't made worse for indoor air or made worse for health inequalities.
Douglas:So that's one part of it, and I think to achieve that, there needs to be a stronger effort on some of the messaging of the importance of indoor air quality, because I do worry that it's slipping off the agenda a bit again, sort of as we move out of the main period of COVID. So really ensuring that, for example, some of the evidence that has been generated through big government investments, like the Clean Air Program, are presented in a clear manner to the new policymakers or those that have influence, to really show the impact that could be had in making sure that buildings are climate friendly and friendly to the occupant.
Simon:Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. My only concern about the sustainability, and part of it, is that we've struggled so much in ventilation and air quality with because it's the built environment, with it being tied to energy and that kind of uh, what's the word of objective logic that nothing beats no ventilation for energy efficiency. Um, that we've struggled to get the funding and the investment into air quality, because often those changes in the built environment have sat with Department of Energy's of whatever makeup they are, and there's very little incentive for those departments no KPIs for air quality outcomes. So I think you're right. It's that understanding that a sustainable building is a healthy building and that we've got to tie the two together, if nothing else, to bring in other funding streams to have an impact, like health ones and social and so on.
Douglas:I think it's a really interesting point yeah, I I think that there is increasing evidence on the from health economists on the potential impact in terms of savings for uk plc phrase I don't often like to use too much but in terms of reduced health costs.
Douglas:So I hope that can be part of the calculus. But I think fundamentally that you know, as you say, you're never going to beat no ventilation, but sort of thinking, quite basically, I mean, what sort of indoor environments do we want to create if we're talking about no ventilation? I think we recognize that there are many things where if we take an absolutist approach, it's going to be better for health or better for climate. But we don't live in a world where often where an absolutist approach is the best, it's always a mix where there are objectives that might be seen as competing, but it'd be about finding the right balance. And I think there is a balance that can be found with net zero, where the built environments contributions to greenhouse gas emissions can be substantially reduced and we can still be delivering healthy spaces which are going to be good for the people of this country but also good for its bank balance, to minimize some of the well, to really maximize cost prevention in terms of health, rather than just fixing it when the problems have already arisen.
Simon:Yeah, hear, hear to that. Douglas. Thanks very much for coming on today. It's been excellent talking to you, as it always is. We've seen quite a bit of each other in the last few weeks. It's been great to get this down on recorded. Thanks a million for taking the time to talk to me. Really appreciate it. We'll share some links in the comments as to what you're up to and the organizations you're involved in, but thanks again, really appreciate the time. Thanks, simon. Thanks for listening. Before you go, can I ask a favour? If you enjoyed the podcast and you know someone else who might be interested, spread the word and let's keep building this community. This podcast is brought to you in partnership with 21 Degrees, aeco, ultra Protect and Imbiote all great companies who share the vision of the podcast and are not here by accident. Your support of them helps their support of the podcast. Do check them out in the links and at airqualitymattersnet.
