#36 - Simon Jones: Air Quality in Holiday Destinations and the Future of Exposomics - Vacation Habits, Paris Olympics, and Ventilation Solutions

Coming up, this week,

Holidays (Air con and Olympics)
A New Ventilation and Air Quality Course
Podcast review
Looking ahead


Have you ever wondered if your holiday habits are harming the environment? I share my experiences from a recent family trip to Spain, where I grappled with the balance between air conditioning and fresh air in the heat. The Paris Olympics and more.

The study of lifetime environmental exposures and their impact on health. We delve into the complexities of how these exposures interact with genetics, emphasizing the crucial importance of exposomics. 

Additionally, listen in on my discussions with Ian Walker and Brad Prezant about the effectiveness of ventilation systems in energy-efficient homes. Are recirculating cooker hoods a better option for passive houses, or should we stick to external ones? 

Finally, don't miss the exciting announcement of upcoming events like the launch of Healthy Homes with Jenny Danson and Jade Lewis, promising more valuable insights into creating healthier living spaces.

https://passiv.de/downloads/05_extractor_hoods_guideline.pdf

https://www.treehugger.com/passive-house-institutes-look-kitchen-fans-less-exhaustive-4857372

http://www.healthyhomeshub.uk/

https://aivc2024conference.org/

https://iaqm.co.uk/event/rtca24/

Chapters

• 0:01 Air Quality and Olympics Impact
• 16:49 Exploring Exposomics and Ventilation Challenges

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out, 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 key. I'm Simon Jones and this is episode 36 of the Air Quality Matters podcast Coming up this week holidays, air conditioning and the Olympics a new course that I've just launched. A review of a couple of the topics on the podcast over the last few weeks and looking ahead for the rest of August and into September and October. Thanks for listening. As always, do check out the sponsors in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet. This is the Air Quality Matters podcast. Airqualitymattersnet. This is the Air Quality Matters podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:14

I have to say you blink and three or four years go by. For me, as with many, the COVID period was pretty full on. I was part of an excellent team of people running a business and navigating as best we could through some pretty turbulent times. Like many organizations, not only were we implementing new ways of working, we also took the opportunity of some of the downtime that COVID brought to implement things like quality standards. It was pretty full on for a period of time there, but after that I took a chance of joining a startup post-COVID and put everything into that for a year or so while I got things set up there. And, as you know, I launched the Air Quality Matters consultancy last year and it's pretty much been the same thing. But this time of course, it's my own business. So again it's been pretty full on, but this time on steroids. Now we have got away over the last few years, but it's only really been for a few days here or there. So it was time for a proper reset as a family and go away for a few weeks to the sun to enjoy some proper R&R. So we had a proper family holiday and it was great no work, lots of sun, rest and time together.

Speaker 1: 2:23

In Spain Now, I did for a large part leave air quality at home, but I couldn't quite escape it and a couple of things did get me thinking. It's amazing how you get used to the quote-unquote norm and I was quite shocked at the level of smoking in Spain. It's an outdoor culture I get, but it surprised me how much smoking still occurs around children. Point in case was one of the trips we took to a water park with the kids, and the amount of smoking in these areas was, quite frankly shocking, I have to say. And the number of young teenagers kind of 12 to 15, I guess openly vaping was equally shocking. But that was an aside.

Speaker 1: 3:12

Really, the thing that really got me thinking most was how ill-equipped I was for managing different environmental conditions, in this case air conditioning and fresh air in an apartment in the south of Spain in the middle of summer, and I have to say it troubled me. It was the kind of temperatures there that certainly reached the melting point of the Irish but at the very least led to uncomfortable night sleeps if you were not managing the space properly. So you were caught in this kind of middle ground of fresh air renewal challenges through natural ventilation and managing comfort through air conditioning, and even with my awareness of energy conservation and air quality, it was a balance. I have to say I found very hard to feel that I was getting right. Most of the time we were in an apartment that had at our disposal windows, ceiling fans and air conditioning a pretty typical setup and even though we felt quite comfortable in the apartment in the kind of 26, 27, 28 degree range, it was a balance I found very troubling and I was kind of jumping in this conflicted manner, from air conditioning off and outdoor air to everything closed and air conditioning on, to the guilt of the air conditioning on and finding doors and windows open. Um, it was a difficult balance to reach. I suppose in some ways it's akin to trying to balance heating your home and providing enough fresh air in this part of the world, but I have to confess I was really unprepared for it. I guess by caring, I'm probably a little ahead of many, but I do wonder what kind of a clusterfuck of poor air quality and energy waste is occurring across these tourist belts, with similarly unprepared tourists like myself, and at a national or regional or global scale. What kind of improvements could we make if this was dealt with in a better way? Are there resources in my case in plain english that could be provided that could address this? I wonder? Let me know, should we do something on the show on it? I think it'd be interesting in in the. How do you manage air quality and thermal comfort in regions where tourists pour into, where we provide better outcomes for people on their rest and recuperation and holidays, which is essential, but also minimize energy waste in the process? One of the great outcomes of the holiday was the timing of the olympics. What great telly. Regardless of the language difference of the television you were looking at, it was a great way to chill out during siestas and downtime, just watching fantastic sport.

Speaker 1: 6:14

As I'm sure some of you are aware, paris had really ambitious plans to use the River Seine as a venue for the 2024 Olympics, and it did that really successfully. Venue for the 2024 Olympics and it did that really successfully, hosting events like the triathlon and marathon swim. The city invested somewhere around, I think, one and a half billion to clean up the river, hoping to make it safe for both the Olympics and future public swimming. However, the plan faced major challenges. Heavy rainfall could cause levels of harmful bacteria like E coli to spike, making water unsafe During the opening ceremony. Heavy rain raised serious concerns about the water quality in the Seine and, as a result, some pre-Olympic swim events were cancelled due to poor water conditions, leading to last-minute changes and backup plans. Despite these challenges, though, all the Olympic races in the Seine went ahead. The controversy and conversation sparked debates about whether it's worth prioritising a venue like this iconic river over athletes' health. While some criticised the decision, others saw the effort as a legacy project that could inspire other cities. Paris officials hope that the clean-up will allow Parisians to safely swim in the Seine again, but the risk of pollution remains, especially after heavy rains. Overall, the conversation about using the Seine highlighted the difficulties in balancing environmental goals with practical realities of hosting global events.

Speaker 1: 7:55

As the Paris Olympics began, a study by Respire, in collaboration with Air Paris, had revealed significant concerns about air quality at sports venues across the city. The study found that nearly all sports centres in and around Paris are exposed to air pollution levels that exceed WHO recommendation limits. The most effective areas are near the Paris Ring Road, where athletes are exposed to hazardous vehicle traffic and particulate matter. Athletes had previously reported adverse effects from air pollution at events, including coughing, throat irritation, asthma attacks and dizziness, and ultimately hindering performance. This report emphasised that athletes are at higher risk during physical exertion, as you'd expect, as they breathe in more pollutants. In response, the Olympic Village had been equipped with advanced air purifiers and outdoor air filters to protect the 10,000 or so athletes attending the Games, or so athletes attending the Games. There were also concerns that the Olympic events may need to be postponed if pollution levels spike during specific events. The findings, a bit like the SEND, really raised broader public concerns and highlights the need for longer term strategies to combat urban air pollution, in this case including stricter emission regulations, promotion of electric vehicles and increased green spaces. In the short term, athletes are advised to train during lower pollution times, such as early mornings and late evenings. Hopefully there'll be some reports and studies from the Games that we can report on in the future.

Speaker 1: 9:46

You might have caught it if you follow me on social media, but I launched a course this month, a kind of toolkit for non-ventilation and air quality professionals in the housing sector, and I thought it might be interesting just to discuss some of the ideas behind this in the podcast. Over the last year or so, I have written and delivered a range of courses, workshops and modules, from the Retrofit Academy's Retrofit Designer Course Ventilation Module in the UK to my own series of half-day and full-day workshops for professionals in housing to a module on ventilation systems for energy efficient retrofit as part of a higher diploma program in retrofit in Ireland. Over the last year or so, I've been developing a theme that cuts through all of this, and it's around building knowledge and a language about what we actually mean by air quality in the context of homes, basic principles around ventilation and, depending on the course, tools and approaches to drive better outcomes. The fact is is we just don't get ventilation right enough, and what I found is often that's not having the language and frameworks required for key stakeholders at the right time to drive the outcomes that we need. And there are many stakeholders, particularly in housing, that have a very important part to play in the success or failure of these endeavors. And some of the most positive feedback I've had from the courses, particularly on the half-day workshops, is from those who would not typically have a say in outcomes the the non-technical people. So I've taken a lot of what has worked over the last year or so delivering these courses and developed a kind of much simpler toolkit for everyone else. It's a plain English, first principles approach to what air quality actually is, what ventilation is and, importantly, how do we begin to define what good looks like and hold the supply chain to account in giving us what we've paid for.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Objectively, we have just simply not been getting what's due to us as customers and as stakeholders, and even in asset management roles. Time and time again, we're being failed by the supply chain, the supply chain that is supposed to deliver effective ventilation. So in this approach I really focused on giving people the language and tools they need, but also the QA process that puts it to the supply chain to deliver in any scenario, to deliver in any scenario, and its foundation really is based around bookending a process that makes someone accountable for the design at the beginning and what systems we need in place to hold that supply chain to account through to the end. You see, in almost all situations someone at some point is making a choice, a choice to change something or replace it, a choice to pick a particular product. In a way, nearly in all circumstances, someone is essentially in that moment being a designer and if we can build some principles around that point that include some accountability, we can start to develop the first bookend of that process With accountability and design. We can then set workflows and processes up to build around that design, that design.

Speaker 1: 13:35

The key is a shift from product specification to performance specification. Changing the language from this product and that product to measurable outcomes that define responsibility and outcome is what it's all about. It just requires a shift in perspective and language and the indicators that we use to define success At its most basic level, rather than success being defined. As I installed X fan. Success is defined by the performance it delivers. This performance-based approach can then feed systemically into every asset of asset management of ventilation systems, from stock condition surveys to cyclical maintenance, to retrofit and even new build developments.

Speaker 1: 14:26

Often, I've found it's not the experts and the supply chain that hold the power or the keys here to success. It's often the customer, those that instruct or request or organize things to happen in buildings, and, given the right tools and language, they can make a profound impact on the quality of outcome. And that's really the hope for this course and ultimately that's the idea behind the course. It's about three hours of video content, some checklists and tools. It's live and I'll keep updating it with resources as I improve them. If you can think of organizations that this might be helpful for or individuals, do spread the word. If you know people that would be interested, point them in the direction of the website and you'll see it from there. I'll have you back to the podcast in a minute.

Speaker 1: 15:20

I just wanted to briefly talk to you about 21 Degrees, a partner of this podcast, formerly the Green Building Store. They were founded in 1995 by three exceptional building professionals. The company grew out of their frustration with the poor availability of ecological building products. I've known them for years as the go-to company in the UK for end-to-end design-led MVHR systems. We spend the majority of our time in our homes, so they should be the best. They can be comfortable and healthy to live in, with exceptional efficiency In fact, life-changing homes At 21 degrees. You won't find a more trustworthy, straight-talking, passionate about what they do and approachable group of people. I speak a lot about the performance gap on this podcast and what we can achieve if we value ventilation highly enough. 21 degrees embodies that sentiment for me. So if you're building a home, looking to install ventilation or need to talk to experts in the field, I can't recommend them highly enough. Links are in the show notes at airqualitymattersnet and you can Google. We Are 21 Degrees. Now back to the podcast.

Speaker 1: 16:49

It's been a really interesting few weeks on the podcast. I hope you've been able to follow them. There's been many brilliant guests, but some of the highlights for me have been definitely having a conversation with Kareem Mandi. I find epidemiology really fascinating and it's something every time. And I came across a new word during that podcast called the exposome, and I'd amazingly never really heard of it before. The exposome refers to the total of all environmental exposures a person experiences throughout their life and how these exposures affect their health throughout their life and how these exposures affect their health. This includes everything from environmental and occupational factors to diet and lifestyle, and it even begins before birth. Understanding how these exposures interact with an individual's genetics and biology is key to understanding the exposome's impact on health.

Speaker 1: 17:57

Exposomics is the study of the exposome using various scientific methods to measure and analyze these exposures. Internal exposure is studied through fields like genomics and proteomics, which look at how our bodies respond to different exposures using biomarkers. External exposures is measured by looking at environmental factors, using tools and surveys. A lot of what we talked about, for example, with Corinne, was about epidemiology and the use of these tools and surveys to study just this. In the use of these tools and surveys to study just this, researchers are still debating the best ways to combine internal and external exposure assessments to fully understand the exposome's role in our health. So why should we study the exposome? Well, the Human Genome Project was expected to greatly enhance our understanding of disease causes and lead to new prevention and cures. However, it's been discovered that genetics only account for about 10% of diseases. The majority of our diseases are likely due to environmental factors. Therefore, to better understand and prevent diseases, it's essential to study environmental causes, which is the focus of exposomics.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Studying the exposome is challenging you can imagine which was a lot of the conversation we had with Corinne because an individual's exposure vary greatly throughout their life. For instance, certain exposure during pregnancy or early childhood can lead to significant health issues later on. The complexity of mapping a person's lifetime exposure is immense, as many exposures are hard to measure or even detect. Some exposures indicated are short-lived, making them difficult to track, while others might only be identifiable only through long-term markers like antibodies. The challenge, it seems, is similar to the early days of genetic research, where hypotheses about specific genes were tested. Now, genome-wide studies help identify gene-disease links. A similar approach could be applied to the exposome disease links. A similar approach could be applied to the exposome by analysing biological samples to make links between exposures and health outcomes. Finally, as with a lot of the conversation I had with Corinne, ethical considerations are crucial in exposomics to protect individuals' rights when studying the links between exposures and health.

Speaker 1: 20:47

I think this is a fascinating subject and it's something that I'm going to have a look into in more detail. I've had in the last few weeks both Ian Walker and Brad Prezant on, both talking about different subjects, but both raised the topic of cookerhoods, something again we're going to have to come back to in more detail in the podcast. My takeaway has been from ian's conversation on what he has seen in studying the effectiveness of ventilation and what is needed for good outcomes, and what I and others and the likes of brad has seen in the field is that we are a very, very long way indeed from what we need to get good outcomes. It sounds like Ian is doing some great work with industry at the moment around standardizing the assessment of the technology, which can only help. But even still, when I pushed him for numbers, the kind of airflow rates that he sees good outcomes with, which are in the 50 to 60 liters a second range through a cooker hood we are simply nowhere near in real life. And as we build more and more energy efficient houses and more airtight ones for that matter, what does the future hold? Well, we can look to the likes of passive house for some clues here, but I don't think it's much clearer.

Speaker 1: 22:09

To be honest, passive house do have a document on cooker hoods. I think it was released in 2019. I'll find it and include it in the show notes. And this document from recollection provides guidelines for integrating kitchen exhaust systems in passive houses, and it emphasises the importance of balancing energy efficiency and effective ventilation, as it always does with passive house. Two types of kitchen exhaust ventilation in the document recirculating hoods, which filter and recirculate air back into the kitchen, and exhaust hoods, which expel air to outside. The guidelines, however, recommend recirculating hoods for passive houses due to their energy saving benefits, but they also provide consideration for using external hoods in ensuring proper airflow and minimizing heat loss.

Speaker 1: 23:11

The concern is particularly their endorsement of recirculating kitchen hoods over exterior exhaust systems. The Passive House Institute clearly advocates for recirculating hoods as they align with energy efficiency goals in passive houses by preventing heat loss. But I would argue that this focus on energy efficiency may overlook the importance of indoor air quality, especially in kitchens, and especially with what we've learned more and more in this podcast, and especially with what we've learned more and more on this podcast. Recirculating hoods may work by filtering air quality and recirculating it back into the kitchen, which, of course, is going to save energy, but I can't see how they're going to effectively remove all of the pollutants of concern that we're talking about, and without understanding of maintenance of filters. I think it's a real risk here. I think, if I remember, there's a great article by Treehugger on this. Again, I'll share the links if I can find it.

Speaker 1: 24:18

There's a couple of interesting things to look out for over the next couple of months that I'm involved in. First up, the end of the month is the launch of Healthy Homes, stewarded by Jenny Danson and Jade Lewis. I'll have them on the podcast later this month, so do look out for that. But they go live with this brilliant venture in September, I think, and, based on their previous work, this is something to really keep an eye on.

Speaker 1: 24:45

The idea behind the Healthy Homes Hub is that it will be a one-in-a-kind network of key stakeholders, a dynamic group including parliamentarians, government departments, agencies, local authorities, academics, installers, contractors, supply chains the list goes on all united in their mission to advocate and deliver healthier homes. It's analogous in some ways to some of jenny's previous work on things like the disruptive innovators network for social housing, which was an organization to help leaders and organizations make sense of disruptive and innovative technology in social housing, and has been very successful. The Healthy Homes Hub will utilise, as the DIN network did, various mediums, including podcasts, webinars, in-person events, case studies, collaborative research, sharing information, roundtable discussion, blogs, and again the list goes on. Within healthy homes, there's going to be a series of specialist hubs focusing on particular areas, and they include things like policy and regulation, retrofit, compliance and safety, resident engagement, thermal comfort and so on, and, of course, air quality engagement, thermal comfort and so on, and, of course, air quality. I'll be supporting them in a range of ways on their air quality hub and we'll be discussing this and much more later this month in the podcast. I'll share the link.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Coming up in October, that's the 9th and 10th of October, is the 44th AIVC conference, that's the Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre. The title of this conference is Retrofitting the Building Stock Challenges and Opportunities for Indoor Environmental Quality. They describe the conference as this in a world striving to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, it is imperative to strike a balance that sustains both our environment as well as the health and comfort of individuals inhabiting buildings. Considering that 90% of the current buildings are projected to remain in the year 2050, retrofitting the existing building stock is paramount in reaching our decarbonisation goals. From the perspective of climate goals. Reducing energy use in the built environment via energy-efficient retrofit in a climate-neutral way is key. However, it is crucial to prioritise indoor environmental quality when reducing energy usage in buildings. Quality when reducing energy usage in buildings. Well-designed and executed retrofits are needed to reduce carbon emissions while ensuring healthy indoor environments. Building retrofit professionals, energy conservation experts, ventilation system designers and installers and indoor air quality specialists must collaborate on innovative solutions to achieve these multifaceted objectives.

Speaker 1: 27:50

The AIVC 2024 conference will serve as a multidisciplinary platform to address the emerging challenges by exchanging cutting-edge ideas, research findings, policies and industrial experiences. Research findings, policies and industrial experiences. I'll be there, as will many of the guests of this podcast over the last year, so do attend, if you can. Another conference to look out for is the routes to clean air conference by the institute of air quality management, I think up in manchester or birmingham on october the 22nd or 23rd. I'll share some links. This is the Institute of Air Quality Management's annual conference and it's a conference on topics relevant to air quality practitioners and associated professionals. This year's conference, as I said, is going to take place over two days and I think it's October, the 22nd or 23rd. I'll share the links to all of these in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 28:49

Keep an eye on the podcast over the next few weeks. There's lots of great guests coming up. We'll be looking at low-cost sensors and standards, social sciences and community engagement and much more. Thanks for listening. Before you go, can I ask, ask a favor though if you enjoyed this podcast and the others and you know someone else who might be interested, do spread the word and let's keep building this community. The podcast is brought to you in partnership with 21 degrees, eco, ultra protect and imbiot all great companies who share the vision of this podcast and are not here by accident. Your support of them really helps their support of this podcast. Do check them out, thank you.