#59 - Plum Stone: Addressing Indoor Air Quality – Health, Accessibility, Social Justice, and Pandemic Lessons

Indoor air quality is an often-overlooked issue that directly impacts public health, especially for individuals with chronic illnesses. Plum Stone, founder of the Safer Air Project, emphasizes the need for better air quality standards to ensure accessibility and inclusion for vulnerable populations. Through personal anecdotes and professional expertise, she sheds light on the urgent need for policy changes, practical solutions, and community advocacy to make indoor spaces safer for everyone.

• Plum Stone's personal journey into air quality advocacy 
• The heightened risks for vulnerable populations during the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Rethinking air quality through the lens of accessibility and inclusion 
• The importance of HEPA filters and ventilation systems 
• Advocacy efforts in schools and healthcare facilities 
• The role of community collaboration in driving policy changes 
• Possible actions for listeners to improve indoor air quality 

Do support our work and advocacy to make safe indoor air a reality for all.

Plum Stone - LinkedIn 

The Safer Air Project 

Chapters

• 0:00 Improving Indoor Air Quality for Health
• 14:10 Navigating Health Risks in Built Environment
• 26:26 Critical Conversations on School Air Quality
• 32:36 Indoor Air Quality and Accessibility Perspective
• 49:32 Advocating for Healthy Indoor Environments
• 1:04:23 Indoor Air Quality Improvement
• 1:18:16 Crucial Dialogue on Indoor Air Quality
• 1:27:56 Performance Standards for Indoor Air Quality
• 1:32:20 Implementing Indoor Air Quality Standards
• 1:47:26 Improving Indoor Air Quality for Accessibility
• 1:54:55 Building Community Through Podcast Partnerships

Transcript

Simon: 0:00

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters. I believe we already have the tools and knowledge we need to make a difference to the quality of the air we breathe in our built environment. The conversations we have and how we share what we know is the key to our success. I'm Simon Jones and coming up a conversation with Plum Stone, founder of the Safer Air Project in Australia. Plum is a policy and public affairs professional who has specialised for the last decade in cancer and social inclusion in terminal illness policy. It is this policy and patient advocacy experience, coupled with Plum's own chronic health condition experience, that led her to found the Safer Air Project. People living with chronic illness have always faced access and inclusion challenges, including exposure to poor indoor air quality that can exacerbate their health conditions. These risks, which have increased since the pandemic, are not broadly recognised by society, marginalising many people and highlighting a serious gap in our approach. Viewing indoor air quality through the lens of access is a profound change in perspective and, and more has on people with long-term health conditions and how access to a group that is often described as the other can improve our built environment for everyone. I really hope you enjoy this episode. Don't forget to check out the sponsors in the show notes.

Simon: 2:03

This is a conversation with Plum Stone. It's unusual for the podcast. We usually have this format where we'd like to start with a big question and then at some point talk to the guest about how they kind of ended up here in this space. But I think from our previous conversation I think it's important with the how you ended up here question at the beginning because I think it so beautifully frames the importance of something like the safer air project. So that's kind of the first question, like plumb, how did you end up here? You know, as a founder of the safer air project yeah, thanks, it's a.

Plum: 2:48

It's a. It's a good question. I so my background is in health policy and public affairs. Um, in 2004 I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on SARS and flu pandemics and how we can learn the lessons of the past to prepare for pandemics of the future. I then did a master's in public health and I worked for a shadow health minister in the UK Parliament and then found myself working in global public affairs agencies on health policy programs and I've always just been fascinated by the role of health policy in solving health problems. So in 2010, you can't tell from my accent, but I'm actually Australian and in 2010, I moved back to Australia and I again was working in global public affairs agencies before I ended up working for a charity called Rare Cancers Australia as their head of policy and public affairs called Rare Cancers Australia as their head of policy and public affairs. And so again I became a really sort of specialist policy expert in rare cancers and the challenges that people with rare cancers face in terms of equity of access to cancer medicines, equity of access to care. For many people living with rare cancers. They have to self-fund access to cancer medicines that if they had a common cancer they would get through, the would be government subsidies.

Plum: 4:13

And then, at the sort of start of the pandemic, I was living in the UK. I was working for Marie Curie, who are a large terminal illness charity, on a program focusing on social inclusion in end-of-life care. And it was really there, we were living in the UK, that my kind of professional experience collided with my personal experience. We were infected super early in the pandemic. I lost my sense of taste and smell for two weeks and 10 days into that infection, my daughter, who was three and a half years old at the time, suffered a prolonged status epilepticus seizure. It was 25 minutes before the ambulance arrived. It was another 20 minutes before they gave her a buckle that eventually stopped the seizure and it was then four hours before she woke up and I really I didn't know if she was ever going to wake up or what the deficits might exist. And this was all before we went into lockdown.

Plum: 5:09

And as we kind of headed into lockdown, the narrative was around people with chronic health conditions, you know, being at particularly increased risk. Well, my daughter and I were, you know, in inverted commas previously healthy. We didn't have any known risk factors for poor health outcomes. But my husband has a stage four chronic kidney disease and so, and it's an autoimmune condition, so he's severely immunocompromised and he requires a transplant. So suddenly, you know, here we were kind of headlong charging into a pandemic and my professional brain was going well, this is really interesting from a policy perspective, you know, and it was, you know, it was just fascinating to me. But also suddenly we had this really acute family risk.

Simon: 5:59

And yeah, and casting our minds I mean, it's hard sometimes, I think, to cast our minds back to this must have been this was in March, April 2020.

Simon: 6:09

Yeah, like there was a lot of fear around then. We didn't know the direction this was heading in. We didn't understand how to control the respiratory failures that were occurring from COVID. We were a long way from even deciding it was airborne at that stage. It's hard sometimes, but I just wanted to kind of set that frame that everything you've been talking about before with public health and working with ministers was all pre-pandemic. And now you find yourself as a family, having gone through a really traumatic event of having to deal with COVID with your daughter so severely and now starting to recognise that members of your family are also vulnerable to this disease. Yeah, yeah, wow.

Plum: 7:00

It was really difficult and as we kind of headed into lockdown, I also started to develop symptoms neurological symptoms, cardiovascular symptoms. I woke up one morning and I'd been sleeping on my left side. I had my 15-month-old baby in bed with me. I'd been sleeping on my left side cuddling him, but the whole of my right side of my body was numb, had kind of pins and needles, and it was a really terrifying. You know, I remember it so clearly and that was really the start of a journey for me that in 2020 and 2021, I was told I was just anxious.

Plum: 7:36

But actually we now know there's symptoms of long COVID and I've been living with those symptoms now for five years. So even for people with pre-existing, there's obviously the risk for people with pre-existing health conditions from airborne infection, but also there's a risk of people developing chronic health conditions who don't have known risk factors. And I just I really, because of my professional brain and my personal experience, I just kind of became fascinated. Well, hang on a second. How is this disease transmitted? Oh, okay, it's airborne and obviously and exactly as you said. You know there was a lot of discussion around that and I don't know if you've read Lydia Morowska wrote a paper. The Science Rejected Lives Lost in 2023. And it really clearly details the work that she and other scientists were doing at the time with the who to get that recognition of airborne. And we lost, we lost so much time, um, and we lost so many lives because, you know, for exactly those reasons, it was you know, we weren't on the front foot saying this is an airborne disease.

Plum: 8:43

We we need airborne protections. We need to clean the air.

Simon: 8:47

I remember plainly at the time I had just been pulled into an advisory group in Ireland. At the same time the kind of the SAGE groups were setting up in the UK. We had an equivalent in Ireland called NEFIT and I was on an advisory group around ventilation and air quality and I'll never forget it became a battle of words. It became a battle of how you describe something as being airborne and the medical community had one description of it and the scientific community had another description of it and, quite frankly, anybody with any common sense had a plain english understanding of it. And that is well. If I'm in a room and I can get it by breathing it in, doesn't that mean it's airborne? You know, it was kind of a. It was just this weird moment for six to nine months in some parts of the world where there was this battle of people going is it, isn't it, airborne?

Plum: 9:51

well, and even it's a battle that's kind of ongoing now, you know it's it's still something that we're we're grappling with, um, I mean for so you know, back to the conversations that you were having. So I I was at that stage at the plain language level, because this was not a policy area that I had previously delved into, but I sort of I very quickly became super interested in, well, hepa filters, co2 monitoring and 95 masks, like all of these things, all of these tools that we have that we can use to protect ourselves, that we can use to make the air safe for everyone to breathe, and sort of rather naively, I think, I assumed that we would take the opportunity, you know, during those lockdowns, to actually put provisions in place to make sure that when we emerged from lockdown, we would have made the air safe. And then we didn't. And so, in sort of July 2021 in the UK, boris Johnson had his freedom day. But actually, for families like mine who have chronic health conditions, this was a very alarming time because we hadn't made provisions to make school safe. We hadn't made provisions to make workplaces safe. We certainly hadn't made provisions to make school safe. We hadn't made provisions to make workplaces safe. We certainly hadn't made provisions to make accessing health care safe and suddenly the risk was entirely on the immunocompromised person the immunocompromised and their family and carers to protect themselves from an airborne virus that wasn't going to go away. And of course, it isn't just COVID that continues to pose a risk. Since public health measures were lifted, we've seen increases in influenza, rsv, measles, human metapneumovirus, which is currently surging in China. So it's all of these airborne viruses that we could be tackling with one solution, by cleaning the air that they're all a risk.

Plum: 11:54

And if you think about it from the perspective of, you know, say, someone living with cancer, when a person with cancer is infected with a virus, whatever virus it is, there is a halt to their treatment and the delays to cancer treatment lead to disease progression. Delays to treatment can be really harmful, and so why aren't we doing more? To you know, when I first joined Rare Cancers, we wrote a report called Just a Little More Time. You know, for people with rare cancers, we're often not talking about curative treatment. We're talking about treatments that can extend life by, you know, by months, you know, in small increments. So what does it mean for people who have a condition when they are infected with a preventable disease, a preventable airborne infection. What does it mean to those precious few months that we're so desperately trying to achieve with high cost cancer medicines?

Plum: 13:07

It seemed to me to be so completely at odds with what we're, with what we're trying to achieve that we would simply allow something that we can prevent from happening to occur and to completely interrupt that. You know, those those very important months, um, that that people so desperately need to to have it just didn't make any sense to me. And it's, and it's still, something that I really kind of grapple with. And ultimately it was the sort of the combination of, you know, post freedom day, that that realization that actually, as family, we now faced an accessibility challenge School was now, we now face an accessibility challenge for school. We now faced an accessibility challenge for work, for healthcare.

Plum: 13:56

Well, we're not alone. Well, my family is not unique in this experience and one of the things I kind of we looked at, you know and this is sort of getting into really a safer air project being formed. My experience was in cancer policy. 1.2 million Australians are living with a past or current diagnosis of cancer. Well, with a population of 27 million, it's not a small proportion with a population of 27 million. You know it's not a small proportion. You know the Australian Bureau of Statistics says that 49% of Australians are living with at least one chronic health condition.

Simon: 14:32

And.

Plum: 14:32

OK, some of those are conditions like back pain, and I'm certainly not saying that people living with back pain have an increased risk of poor health outcomes from airborne infection. Health outcomes from airborne infection, but conditions like asthma, diabetes, autoimmune conditions, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke or these people living with these conditions actually make up a huge percentage of the population and so what happens when all of these people now face an increased risk of poor health outcomes because of an infection.

Plum: 15:05

And it just became very frustrating. I mean I basically haven't slept a lot in the last five years because I've done a lot of that's when I do kind of most of my thinking. I just lay awake kind of wondering, well, if this isn't a problem that's unique to us, it's, it's something that a lot of people are experiencing and we, we've made steps. We have, you know, we have various vehicles for accessibility inclusion We've made. You know, if my child was in a wheelchair, the school would be accessible. If my child was, you know was neurodiverse, the school would be accessible. You know, there would be things that would be put in place to ensure that my child could safely access their education.

Plum: 15:53

But how come for an immunocompromised child. We're facing pushback from education providers on making the air safe and accessible and it just was one of those things, one of those thoughts that sort of I really wasn't able to kind of put back into the box.

Simon: 16:14

Yeah, so I want to kind of consolidate that framing in my own mind, if you don't mind.

Simon: 16:22

We have this period of time where the world suddenly decides to move on from covid, collectively right and it. It happened largely globally within the period of three to six months. Like the world suddenly decided we're done with that, it's cost us too much money, we're off and it pulls the rope ladder up on the ship and goes right. We're off and there's a whole section of the community stood there looking at this ship going hang on. A minute like this isn't over for a section of society and I made a note there.

Simon: 17:06

You know people are vulnerable and this was the other framing I wanted to try and put forward. This is a problem of the built environment. People they didn't and don't get sick from covid outside in the park, but much as we ban people from the park at the beginning when we didn't really know what we were doing. But this is a problem of the built environment and the reason this is an accessibility issue is, as Kath Noakes, who was from Leeds, a very prominent voice during the time and an engineer, importantly said, what COVID asked of us was not whether buildings were a problem or not. What did we actually know about the buildings that we own?

Plum: 17:52

and manage?

Simon: 17:53

and the answer to that question was sweet f? All. Yeah, that that actually the answer that came back was well, nobody's been paying any attention to ventilation and air quality in our built environment ever, so we, we don't know what our classrooms are doing, frankly, we have no idea what our office spaces are doing, quite frankly, or our homes, or almost any other part of the built environment, in fact, even most parts of the.

Simon: 18:20

The medical sector we didn't really know that most of our hospital environment is older buildings that are naturally ventilated. We've got, so we came. We came to that period of time where the rope ladders being pulled up and the reason people are being left behind is because our built environment was not prepared, and is still not prepared, to manage ventilation and infection risk in a way that includes everybody. And the final note I made here when we're framing this was this isn't just about direct exposure to people that are vulnerable. This is the family members and close associates of people that are vulnerable. This is the family members and close associates of people that are vulnerable.

Simon: 19:08

This affects, too, a child doesn't go to school and come home and infect somebody. That and that they need a wheelchair as a result. But with covid, that that's the risk here. If, if you're not making buildings accessible to family members, yeah, the risk is is that they become infected and bring that risk home to family members as well. So you're now left there in the uk looking at this environment where there's freedom day, which must, must still stick in your throat yeah, it's awful yeah, I'm thinking, hang on a minute, like vast swathes of the built environment.

Simon: 19:55

I don't know if you even had access as a as a a picture in your mind yet, but you must have been stood there going hang on a minute. Large swathes of the built environment are off limits to me and my family now. Um, yeah, what did you do? Like what? What? What happens next when you're sitting there as somebody with all the skills and knowledge you've had about public health and working with governments, and you're stood in the uk and you're thinking this is manifestly unfair, like this is a social justice problem here. Yeah, what happened next for you?

Plum: 20:32

So, obviously, sort of July 2021 was the kind of the freedom day, the lifting of all the breaks, and we were kind of left on our own. And obviously we were still know, still then, still are now very conscious of the fact that any infection could have a significant impact on my husband's kidneys. But you know, I've I've been reinfected since, since our, but you know, I've had two infections one in November 2022 and it floored me because my long COVID it just you know know I was taken out for three, four weeks and it was awful. So, 2021, we were still super aware of the fact that, although the rhetoric from government was this is over, it felt an awful lot like people were just burying their heads in the sand because, actually, the collective trauma, it was just easier to pretend like it wasn't a thing and to just move on. And so we headed back to school in September 2021. And I was already, you know, had been in, you know, in the terms previous to that, but I became very vocal about advocating for HEPA filters in our classrooms and I was on the board of our nursery, our preschool nursery as well. So I was, you know, advocating there for HEPA filters. I was successful in getting HEPA filters into our nurseries, which was great, but the experience with the primary school was no, they didn't want to hear about it. School was safe.

Plum: 22:02

So by October 2021, people who were there was no longer any testing requirements, there were no isolation requirements and infectious children were allowed back in school. And I remember going on half term and thinking what are we going to do here? You know this is an unacceptable level of risk. You know this is an unacceptable level of risk. How are we meant to navigate this now, where my child could go to school and bring home an infection that could kill daddy, and you know it felt insurmountable. And at the same time, australia reopened its borders and I said to my husband we've got to go home, we've got to go back to Australia. And I mean for friends in the UK. He said why are you going back to Australia? They'll do the same thing.

Plum: 22:55

I was like no, australia is never going to abandon public health measures. And we got back here in December 2021, literally the week that Dominic Perrottet, who is the Premier for New South Wales, pulled the same Freedom Day for New South Wales and it was really traumatising. So we arrived back and then we went through. The next few months were deja vu and I had exactly the same experience. My son was still in preschool and my daughter was going back into primary. So I began advocating to the preschool and the primary for the HEPA filters and I think maybe CO2 monitors. By that stage I'd kind of learned about CO2 monitoring and the opportunities there as well and the preschool accepted it gladly. Very, it was a. It was at that stage it was a 50 centimeter.

Plum: 23:49

You know box fan Corsi, rosenthal box. Um, you know which I, which, which I, which I bought. You know you mentioned Kath Noakes earlier. I kind of credit all of my kind of learning around um, around indoor air quality um, to people like Kath and to Richard Corsi and Kimberly Prather and all of these incredible scientists on Twitter. You know those early kind of years on Twitter where these incredible scientists were sharing the latest research and the latest innovations was just. You know, I feel very lucky that I had access to their knowledge through that.

Plum: 24:28

So yeah, you know, I built this giant Corsi Rosenthal box. I put really big, googly eyes on it and you know it was because it was for a preschool right, but the school didn't want to hear about it. The school was safe. So exactly the same language came out of the australian primary schoolers, came out of the uk, which I thought was really interesting. Um, and I I mean obviously I'm like a dog with a bone, right, there's a reason I founded a charity, because I can't put this away but again, I want, I want to put people into that mental space.

Simon: 25:05

I am as guilty of it and my family are as guilty of it as I think most of the population was, and that was.

Simon: 25:13

We couldn't wait to see the back of COVID and there was a collect. You know, if people can just reimagine what that drop in anxiety levels was like for people where, where it was basically just classified now as another flu and we were like, right, we just get on with it if we get it. I don't even want to do a test if I've got a cough or I just don't want to see, I don't want to stick another swab up my nose for as long as I live right and so but and we'll talk about this later but I think it really speaks to the heart of tolerable risk and acceptable risk that for the vast majority of the population, it suddenly became a tolerable risk. Yeah, right, um, now imagine for listeners to put themselves in your shoes, where that anxiety never went away, that that risk never went away. And so now, in 2025, you are still thinking about covid and infection risk day to day, in the same way that you were 2022. Yeah, that's a powerful driver for for doing what you did next, I guess.

Plum: 26:26

I mean for us. It's funny to think about as people's anxiety levels dropping. For us, my anxiety level increased significantly because actually infectious children were now going to be in the classroom.

Simon: 26:38

Yeah.

Plum: 26:39

And until that moment, our exposure had been very limited because people were doing the right thing. They were isolating, they were testing, they were isolating, and now they now they're not, and now they don't care if the infection that they've got is COVID flu, rsv. You know all of all of which. You know they're all consequential and so, yeah, my anxiety level was increased significantly because actually suddenly there was even less that I could do to protect my family. And so when the school said, no, you can't have HEPA filters, I was just like why it doesn't make any sense, because improving indoor air quality, as you know, also improves it, doesn't? It doesn't just reduce infestation risk, it actually improves cognitive functioning. Schools get better test scores. Why wouldn't schools want their children to get better test scores when the children don't even have to do anything, they just have to breathe and you know, and the sort of the stupidity of it all. Just it was kind of mind blowing for me.

Plum: 27:55

I did eventually get HEPA filters into the primary school in June 2023, so 18 months later and the reason that I was successful was because I used this analogy. I said to the principal if my daughter was in a wheelchair, you would have made sure that not only her classroom but the entire school was accessible, and so would the excursions be. You know the excursions would be accessible. Excursions currently are not accessible for us. The kids get on a bus. Buses have the worst ventilation. I don't know if you've ever put an Aranet on a school bus, but I mean, I've got readings and it's included in the report that we published, where it's three and a half thousand. Amy, my co-founder, sent her Aranet on the school bus with her daughter and it was eight thousand eight hundred.

Plum: 28:49

I mean what are we doing?

Simon: 28:54

hundred. I mean, what are we doing? Thankfully, the horror of school buses is a long, long way behind me, but I I still remember vividly what nasty environments they were, even back in that. Well, I won't even say when, but um, like the reality is is they're very small air conditioned boxes with a bunch of people breathing recirculated air. I mean it's yeah, you couldn't make anything worse, you know no.

Plum: 29:12

So you know, and then you put you know potentially one infectious child on a bus when you've got a ppm at 8800. You know the chances of you know transmission are really high and it really should be unacceptable. Um so, yeah it. It was when I raised that this was an accessibility issue with the school that they went oh, I hadn't thought about it that way, and it was like was that a light bulb moment for you?

Simon: 29:43

because I can imagine you being in a position where you're going, like a lot of things when you're trying to where something is is objectively nonsense, right? You've got this scenario where there's this massive risk to the family, there's co-benefits for days, for improving air quality on teachers, kids, visitors, you name it like it virtually no downsides to this, for a cost that's inconsequential, really, and nothing's landing, uh, and? And then you find yourself having an argument about accessibility. Is that the light bulb moment for you where you go? Hang on a minute. This is a. This is a fairness thing. That this is a, this is a public, this is a social justice thing.

Plum: 30:36

This is about access.

Simon: 30:37

Yeah, yeah.

Plum: 30:38

So 2023 was when I was away thinking about accessibility and inclusion and it was so obvious to me that our family faced an accessibility challenge for school and by 2023, my husband had to give up his job. It involved an awful lot of international travel and the risk was just too great. So hang on a second. How come you've got people having to quit their jobs because the workplace isn't safe? How come you've got children who are having to mask? You know, to wear respirators in classroom, face bullying and just none of it kind of made sense. How come you've got cancer patients?

Plum: 31:25

You know you spoke about a family, you know where a school child brings the infection home and infects someone. That happened to a friend of mine. She'd been through 15 rounds of chemotherapy, was due a double mastectomy, and her son brings COVID home on the 15th round of chemo through no fault of his own, because he caught it in the classroom, you know, and there's there's no blame. He was, he was exposed, he should never have been exposed. But he brings it home, she catches covid. The double mastectomy is then postponed because of the infection, you know, with a really aggressive cancer and that, yeah, I mean. I remember being deeply concerned when she told me and this was you know the, just because we know delays, delays to cancer treatment, lead to ultimately, invariably yeah and and yeah, and you know I haven't speaking to you like this is not.

Simon: 32:36

You know, this is not about eliminating risk, but when there's a clear contributor to risk in the built environment nobody is saying here that kids aren't going to bring home bugs from schools and infect families. I mean, schools are veritable petri dishes at the best of times. But when there's a known risk that's causing an accessibility issue, like you say, in the same way that if a kid had visual impairment or or hearing impairment, like the school would fall over backwards to make sure that the right facilities and mechanisms were in place in that child's education, we'd hope anyway. I know that you know schools are massively underfunded and I'm sure there are listeners screaming at the podcast going no, I've been fighting for a ramp for my school for nine years or whatever. So we know there's a problem there.

Simon: 33:41

But when there's a manifest risk that's causing an accessibility issue and can significantly reduce the risk, which we believe it can particularly for airborne diseases can significantly reduce the risk, which we believe it can, you know, particularly for airborne diseases Just seems like a no-brainer. And this is what I think has been a really enlightening part of talking to you, plum. You know I've been involved in air quality for 15 years 20 years nearly, at this stage and, god, I've been talking about air quality a lot in the last year or two with the podcast. As you can imagine, I have never viewed air quality from an accessibility perspective, and it's a you know it's. If we're going to win this battle around air quality, we need all of the perspectives we can, and it's amazing, you know there's there's so many different ways of viewing this challenge. You know social injustice, you know health outcomes, public health and so on. Accessibility is a very powerful argument, isn't it?

Plum: 34:46

yeah, well, and that is exactly why these sleepless nights, you know, eventually kind of led me to the decision that I couldn't sit back and watch. You know, these arguments for delivering mandated indoor air quality standards, everybody sort of trying to work towards, to work towards making the air safer, but without the lens of accessibility, my experience of working in cancer policy. If I want to make change to cancer policy, I go down to Canberra, I get a meeting with the minister and his advisors and various other MPps and I take a patient with me so that they can hear the lived experience of the person living with cancer yeah and for me it just kind of seemed obvious that there wasn't the lived experience of the person with the chronic health condition being heard in the policy arguments for improving indoor air quality.

Plum: 35:52

And so the natural progression was to say, ok, well, cool, let's fill that gap. Let's found a charity with a vision to create a world where everyone can breathe safely indoors and see if we, if in doing so, if in bringing this sort of the patient voice and the personal perspective to the debate, we can make a difference. And so that's. You know, it's certainly not the easy solution. Founding a charity is definitely not the easy solution, but I do firmly believe that in bringing that voice to the conversation, we can try and sort of shift the dial or at least kind of accelerate momentum towards our goal, which is to have safe indoor air quality standards that apply to all public spaces, standards that apply to all public spaces. So, yeah, we founded the Safer Air Project late 2023. Seems weird to say that, because now we're in 2025.

Plum: 37:08

We got our charity status, you know, in April, and then in August 2024, the Australian chief science officer published a report on the role of indoor air quality in viral transmission, and that report had been called for by assistant minister for health, jed Carney, and so that is where that report kind of came about.

Plum: 37:30

So Jed launched the report in August and as she was launching it she said in the presentation so now we've got this report that clearly defines, you know, the role of indoor air quality and viral transmission and the tools and the technology that we have. We already have that we can use to tackle this problem, and now we just need to kind of move forward on the policy and work out what the policy levers are and I was sort of sitting in the launch going I know what these are. It's accessibility. Accessibility is the reason why we need indoor air quality performance in all public spaces. We need indoor air quality performance in all public spaces. If you take, for example, the Australian Disability Discrimination Act, it already applies to people living with chronic health conditions and it says that all spaces should be universally accessible.

Simon: 38:36

How would that practically apply today? Of the air quality? Yeah, question like when you're saying buildings should be accessible to people with chronic health conditions. What, what does that? How does that manifest? Like what's the road trodden, if you were in that regard?

Plum: 38:50

so. So so I'm not sure that really, to date, it kind of focuses on chronic health conditions. I think it's more around accessible accessibility for people who use wheelchairs, accessibility for people, um, who are blind, um who are deaf, you know, through assistive audiology, braille ramps, etc.

Plum: 39:08

Yeah, and but the legislation explicitly states chronic health conditions and therefore in theory it can be used for these purposes. You know, we don't have to kind of look to create new legislation it already should cover. But what no one has really done yet is kind of connect the role of indoor air quality in health and indoor air quality and accessibility, yeah, impact the health and well-being of people who have chronic health conditions and that they are disproportionately at increased risk of poor health outcomes from and it can be exposure to airborne pathogens, but also other airborne pollutants, right, you know asthma, allergies etc. Then you have to kind of think about it. Well, if that's an accessibility challenge, how do we solve it?

Simon: 40:14

And also this is close to home for people. Sorry to interject, but you know, if you just take cancer, for example, what is it? Everybody in their lives? One in four people at some point are going to have some form of cancer, right?

Plum: 40:28

Yes, in Australia it's one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer before the age of 85.

Simon: 40:32

Yes, so in Australia it's one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer before the age of 85.

Simon: 40:42

So we are all a heartbeat and a relation away from somebody who's likely to be vulnerable and have an accessibility issue, whether we understand it well enough yet or not, in our lives, which means this is close to home for everybody. But this isn't you know. If we were saying, you know, in the next 50 years, one in three of you are going to end up in a wheelchair, yeah, you'd have ramps everywhere. Right and rightly so we have. We have been putting accessibility into most public spaces over the last decade or two for that very reason. But this is this is not some distant risk for us as people. You know and even if it's not cancer, you could, for a period of time in your life you could be vulnerable with something else like this. The risk is very real here that all of a sudden, places that you took for granted could be inaccessible for the reasons that we're talking about.

Plum: 41:47

That's profound and this is exactly. This is exactly that kind of light bulb moment of oh my God, this is not a me, this is not a unique to my family, this is an everybody issue. Off the back of the Chief Science Officer's report, I got in touch with Assistant Minister for Health Jed Carney's office and I met with him the following week and at the end of the meeting I said I don't suppose the Assistant Minister would be interested in launching a report for us on indoor air quality as an accessibility issue. And she came back two days later and said, yes. I was like, oh okay, amazing, well, now I've got to write it, um, but you know, we that was that was pretty easy to do because obviously I'd spent so many sleepless nights, I, I knew exactly what I wanted to say and, you know, produced this kind of 15,000 words in about a week. You know, because, because I already, I already had all of these arguments fully formed and one of them is this particular point around. They are all of us.

Plum: 42:48

What happened at the start of the pandemic was people with chronic health conditions were othered. We were, you know, certainly in Australia. You know, even when we got back here in December 21,. You know there was still a daily press conference saying, you know, 66 people died. They all had chronic health conditions and it was kind of said in this way that was sort of meant to be reassuring to people that you know it's okay, they were black.

Simon: 43:17

It's okay they were indigenous. It's okay they were in a wheelchair. Could you imagine like?

Plum: 43:22

no, a hundred percent yeah it was really offensive to me and in fact someone, someone said to me you know, a, a child had died and we were talking about it and they said, oh, but they had lots of pre-existing health conditions. And I exploded. I said, would you say that to my husband? If my husband died, would you say to me, it's okay, he died because he had a pre-existing health condition? No, you wouldn't, but it was. But. But it was said from, you know, from the chief health officers and and others, that as a way to kind of make people think that it's all right, you're not vulnerable, these people and, and you know, and and so the othering that occurred, it was people were kind of led to be, don't worry, they were palliative already, they were, you know, they, they were on death's doorstep.

Simon: 44:13

Yeah, and then you know there's there's an element of truth in that. You know, in in statistics, people are more likely to die from these things if they're vulnerable. It's true, you know you will for it. You know that in the stats, if you're saying it as it is, that's true, but doesn't make it right.

Plum: 44:35

And you know, and that's the thing you know, we, we don't leave people behind because we don't, we don't basically say I'm sorry, you're 65, now you're at increased risk, so here you're on your own. We don't say to someone oh, you've got cancer, now we're going to leave you on your own, we're not going to try and tackle it, we're not going to try and treat it. And look, this is not.

Simon: 45:09

You know, and this is not our saying, for is a manifest risk in the built environment, the boxes that we build for people, that those boxes are excluding a larger proportion of society than you might imagine.

Simon: 45:25

Because not because we we have to do something lofty, because we're not doing what we probably should have been doing all along anyway. And this is the you know I talk about this ad nauseum on the podcast and Kath's point about not knowing how these buildings are performing. The reality is that a lot of the problem that we're dealing with with these boxes that are excluding portions of societies, we've not been getting what we've paid for in the first place. A lot of this risk would be reduced if the buildings were doing what they were supposed to anyway, and society's penchant for running to failure, ventilation and HVAC systems and buildings has got us to where we are, or this belief that, just because there's a standard, the supply chain is going to deliver. We've found ourselves now with whole torches of the built environment education, health care, residential workplaces that aren't performing how they should be, residential workplaces that aren't performing how they should be. Um, so I then mention it because it's an important part here.

Simon: 46:38

You know that that when we get animated talking about this, it feels a bit regressive in a way that we're saying oh no, we need to go back heart, back to the time when we were all sat in our gardens not able to go anywhere. No, not even close.

Plum: 46:50

But this is about saying that we should be have freedom day, but the reason we can't, for a portion of society, is because those buildings don't provide access to certain parts of society what we should have done in the time where we were sitting in our gardens is make indoor air quality safe so that the you reduce the level of transmission to the lowest practicable level, and we could have done that, and in doing so, we could have. It wouldn't have just been COVID, that would have had an impact. We would have had an impact on, we'd have had an impact on flu, we'd have had an impact on RSV, on chickenpox, on measles, on all of these airborne viruses. We'd have also had an impact on asthma and allergies and we could have had an impact. And we also could have prepared ourselves for the next pandemic which is knocking on our door. I mean, we're still in this pandemic, australia. We're just in another crashing wave. We're just in another crashing wave. We haven't come out of this one because we didn't do what we needed to do to make it go away, which was to make the air safe. We are therefore not prepared for the next one, which is a heartbeat away, and we're also not prepared for the.

Plum: 48:12

You know. I mean we're already in a climate crisis. You know. Look at the fires in LA over the last couple of weeks. You know Australia.

Plum: 48:19

We know all too well the you know the dangers of bushfires and the significant impacts on society. We are not ready when, as the climate sort of crisis accelerates, we will move indoors more. The air indoors must be safe, so that what we really need to do is to kind of look very quickly at moving forwards on setting a safe indoor air quality standards so that, as society moves indoors more as a result of climate change as society kind of, you know, we, you know we spend so much time indoors the air should be safe. It should be safe for everyone, and be it because you already have a pre-existing health condition that makes you at significantly increased risk, or because you have a future health condition, or because exposure to the pathogen or the pollution today creates a health condition. You know, I didn't have a health condition before I was infected with COVID. Now I live with cardiovascular and neurological symptoms that you know are really quite debilitating, symptoms that are really quite debilitating.

Simon: 49:32

I'll have you back to the podcast in just a minute, but I wanted to tell you briefly about Imbiote, a partner of the podcast. I came across Imbiote a while ago and in fact completely unrelated to the podcast had been trying out some of their sensors here in my office, which I still have here today, and with customers. I was seriously impressed then and remain so. Imbiote are a multidisciplinary team with a common goal to promote healthy and sustainable interior spaces. They manufacture smart indoor air quality monitors and an exceptional cloud platform. Look, I get to see and use many products, as you can imagine, and Imbia stands out here the quality of the product, the innovation they bring with sensors and connectivity options and a platform with some unique approaches to reporting and integration with many of the reference standards in the sector, like Reset, well, lead and others. Their devices can also be integrated to any building to control and automate the operation of HEVAC systems, ensuring optimal air quality and energy savings. Details are in the show notes, as always, and at airqu mattersnet and at imbiot. That'si n b I o t dot e s.

Simon: 50:58

Now back to the podcast. Yeah, and it may not even be an infection risks that gives you that chronic health condition you could be exposed to poor air quality. That gives you cancer or lung cancer or kidney disease or anything you know. We now know that air quality impacts every organ of the body. Yeah, so it's a, it's a chronic health condition waiting to happen, that poor environment as well? Yes, so where's the safer air project today? You released the report and I will share that in in the notes and what. What struck me about the report was both its clarity in its positioning, but also in its storytelling and the people at the heart of it. It was quite a unique report. It brought the stories of real people to the fore, which I thought was very powerful. So that report was released when.

Plum: 51:51

So we released that in Novembermber. On november 20th, we tried to tie it in with world ventilate day, um which was sort of always, always the vision, but we couldn't get the assistant minister, uh, to be available on the 8th of november, um, so, uh, yeah, we launched it on the 20th of november in parliament house um in canberra, um, and it was, it was. It was an amazing day, like it was. It was the best and the the recording from um, the recording from the launch, I've watched several times.

Simon: 52:21

I really enjoyed it I didn't get to see it all. Actually, I got up as far as uh lydia talking um, but, but it's worth watching actually. So if you're if you're a bit shy about reading a report, the video is not a bad introduction to the subject as well. I think there's some really good explanations of the import of this um, but the report is. I'll share the share the report in the show notes because it's a really a really good document that I think really and this is a I think it's of global importance this this isn't an australia thing, is it?

Plum: 52:52

yeah, no, no, we global importance this, this isn't an Australia thing, is it yeah?

Plum: 52:54

No, no, we're trying to make indoor air quality as an accessibility issue a global movement because, guess what? There are indoor spaces in every country. There are people with chronic health conditions in every country. It is something that affects everyone and everywhere. Yeah, both the report launch and the report itself were really kind of focused on the lived experience. So if you got up as far as Distinguished Professor Lydia Morosko speaking, then you would have also seen the lived experience panel and on that panel we had it was a very everybody on the panel had a PhD and on that panel we had it was a very everybody on the panel had a PhD.

Plum: 53:38

It was Associate Professor Robin Schofield, who's an atmospheric scientist and you know and I mean Robin's work in the early years of the pandemic were really interesting. She was based out of University of Melbourne and you know she did work around kind of demonstrating that you can clear infectious aerosols from a patient room within five and a half minutes. So her work is really interesting. But she is also someone who's living with breast cancer. So she spoke of her experience of being diagnosed with cancer and then sitting in an oncologist's office whilst he's unmasked, the CO2 levels are high and she's sitting there thinking this doesn't make any sense. You're seeing so many vulnerable people, you're an expert in your field and yet you're not keeping up with the science. You know, and an oncologist has the potential to see, you know, 20 or so vulnerable patients in a day if he was, you know, asymptomatic or pre-symptomatically infected with anything, that could be really bad for the outcomes of any of your patients. So I thought her perspective at the launch was really interesting. And then there were two others Hayley, who is also a board member for the Immune Deficiencies Foundation in Australia, but she's also a policy manager at the Australian Academy of Sciences and she has been working on the Pathways to Indoor Air program alongside the Burnett Institute.

Plum: 55:03

So, hayley also, you know, all of the people who we had on the lived experience panel were, you know, had were, either because of their professional lives or because of their personal experience, had become really interested in indoor air quality, and that's what people with chronic health conditions have had to do. They've had to learn how do I protect myself? How do I? You know what? What tools are available N95 masks and Aronet, co2, and other brands are available. There are so many kind of things that we can do you know, and they're all people who've been advocating for, you know, improving indoor air quality in their workplaces, in their schools.

Plum: 55:50

And really, you know, this wasn't the first report I've I've written like this. This is, you know, this is how I've written reports for the last 15 or so years through my work with rare cancers and and Marie Curie and others. Well, you tell the personal story. The personal story is how we get policy over the line, because once you understand how poor policy affects real people, you can see why you need to make a change. And so it was really the whole driver behind, you know, sort of Safer Air Project. But we're incredibly grateful to Assistant Minister Jed Carney for her interest and she has really been a sort of a leading figure in the Australian government in terms of keeping indoor air quality on the policy agenda, and so we're looking forward to kind of progressing that. The report has gone to N Health, which are a committee of the Department of Health, and we're in discussion with them around moving it forward.

Plum: 56:50

But as well as our kind of policy work, which I kind of see as like our top-down approach, we're also working with patient organizations to help them be safe air organizations.

Plum: 57:03

So how do they make sure that their offices are safe for their employees and for the patients who go there? How do they provide resources to their patients so that their high risk communities understand the role of indoor air quality in their health? You know so Hayley, who I mentioned, you know as a board member of the Immune Deficiencies Foundation, is one such organization we've been working with. We've also been working with Emerge Australia, who look after people living with ME-CFS, and now also long COVID and also with cystic fibrosis together, who also look after people with cystic fibrosis, and it's been really interesting kind of working with these groups because they look after such high-risk communities. Those high-risk communities aren't getting information from government or from anywhere else around the role of indoor air quality in health and their health outcomes. So you see people kind of walking into the supermarkets and they're sanitizing their hands and you know that they want, on some level, they want to protect themselves, they know they don't want to get sick, but no one's really explained yet around air.

Plum: 58:23

Yeah, yeah, you know, and I just see it as such a massive failure that we didn't didn't educate people. So so our community support program is something that we're we're looking to expand this year, and I'm super excited because it just gives us such a great opportunity to reach people who really do need to know about the connection between indoor air and their health. And then the other thing which I'm super excited about is our kind of bit in the middle, which is our invisible inclusion program, which is working with businesses.

Plum: 58:56

So there are two types of businesses Businesses who really understand indoor air quality, have great indoor air quality, have invested in indoor air quality because of the productivity gains that are achievable. And there are businesses who are diversity, equity and inclusion champions, who may or may not already have good indoor air quality. But what happens if you can combine them? What happens if you can get you know? We know Amazon have invested in indoor air quality across their global portfolio. What happens if you can get Amazon to start running an invisible inclusion program alongside disability inclusion and gender inclusion and what other programs they might be running.

Plum: 59:42

What happens if you run an invisible inclusion program alongside that investment in indoor air quality and you can educate your staff on the role of indoor air quality and health and the role of indoor air quality and inclusion? Well, suddenly we've just had a huge opportunity to create an army of employers who then go out into their communities and start advocating in their schools hey, why doesn't my kid have really good air quality in his classroom? Can we do something about that? You know, we've we've just kind of raised the level of awareness, and I think that's I think that's what we really need to kind of move forward on is it's? It's not an, it's not a niche, it's not a niche thing.

Plum: 1:00:24

We all breathe, we all breathe indoors. It should be something that we, you know. It should be something that we all think about or that we don't have to think about because it is safe. We don't think when we go to the tap and pour ourselves a glass of water, is this safe? And that's where we need to get to. We need to kind of accelerate through the thinking about it to the not having to think about it phase because we know that it's safe having to think about it phase because we know that it's safe.

Simon: 1:00:54

And worse than that, you know, if we, when we go to the tap, and we don't think about it when we have a drink, if we don't like the taste of it, we can decide not to have a drink until a bit later on, um, I don't know if anybody's tried not breathing for a couple of hours until you get home, but it doesn't end up working out very well for you. Um, so we don't have that. And that's the thing about risk is, with air quality, we don't have that choice. You know, minute to minute we are going to breathe the air that in the room that we're in. That's just the way it's going to go. Yeah, so what? What's next?

Simon: 1:01:30

I mean you've talked about the report is there and that that's in the, the machinery of government at the moment, and then, as you know, probably from lived experience, that's a slow moving machine. Sometimes public awareness, probably even more so, in to some degree, unless there's some kind of global pandemic. You know the, the people are reluctant to change quickly. Yeah, behaviors and habits and and so on. I I think the industry one's an interesting angle, I think on a number of levels? I think, yes, you're absolutely. If, if anywhere in your documentation you talk about access, accessibility rights in your building, yeah, you've got a conversation to be had in this, framing around the accessibility of your spaces to vulnerable people because of the air quality, I think that's a fascinating piece and you may will find, as you say, certain companies will move, particularly if they have.

Simon: 1:02:27

I mean, dei is under a bit of pressure for a number of reasons at the moment, particularly in the States, but you know, nonetheless, I think, at a fundamental level, most organizations recognize there's some level of inclusion and disability rights for employees and visitors to buildings. Another angle I think might be interesting is the money men that particularly like here in Europe, as you know, we've got things like the eu taxonomy and, and you know, esg and non-financial reporting directive. The way that assets are valued has fundamentally shifted and the focus predominantly is on energy at the moment, but increasingly it's on its impacts to society and disability and and so on. So I I think there's probably an angle there as well. But you know, within the mechanisms that value assets, if you've got an asset that's excluding parts of society, um, from an access perspective, if that's rated, if that's understood. Yeah, by mechanisms, that will be a powerful lever. I would have thought.

Plum: 1:03:35

I think, when you think about it from a sort of corporate real estate perspective and you think about levers that we have to sort of drive return to the office, having an indoor air quality performance standard that demonstrates not only that the space is safe and accessible but also that you're going to see an increased productivity from your workforce because of, you know, improved cognitive functioning, reduced absenteeism, etc. Why wouldn't there be a competitive? You know the corporate real estate market is competitive as it is. It's another, it's another star to add that you know this is this, this is a, this is a safe place, it's an accessible space and I just, I just think there's huge potential.

Plum: 1:04:23

If you think about daycares right, and you know we kind of spoke about them briefly earlier about being pet traditions they don't have to be. We've kind of just accepted that kids get sick in daycare because we haven't done anything to clean the air. You get these. You know all of this kind of hygiene theatre around wiping surfaces and cleaning toys, and I'm not saying that you know it's not important but I think we could have a much bigger impact if we were cleaning the air and if you had two daycares next to each other and one of them had a five-star air quality rating and the other one didn't have a rating at all, because they you know which one are you going to choose to send your kid to?

Plum: 1:05:10

I'm going to send the one where my kid is likely to get sick less. To send your kid to, yeah, yeah, my kid is likely to get sick less. I'm going to lose less work days myself. I'm going to get sick less. Like there's a competitive advantage to be had from from moving on this, and moving on it early, because it is inevitable that we will. You know, it's inevitable. We will end up with indoor air quality performance standards because the reasons against them are. I don't know. I don't know what the reasons against them are, but they're obviously you know, and I think you're right.

Simon: 1:05:40

You know we, we do, we do accept things that we shouldn't be accepting. And you know, this hygiene theater, this, this destruction of the building's microbiome with bleaches and disinfectants and additive products, you know is having a negative impact in one direction. You know kids in preschool need to be free to lick the railings and the floors and suck on toys and spread germs. That way they will do that. That's part of building up resilience and becoming, you know, a healthy organism. But at the same breath, if, if the air that you're breathing is loaded with chemicals and particulates and viruses and mold spores and so on, you can be the other direction as well. And again, we're not advocating here necessarily for additive air cleaning where we're whatevering the the air to death.

Simon: 1:06:40

This is about reducing risk to a tolerable level and not not creating those three and a half, four thousand parts ppm environments, you know, co2 environments, where it's just manifestly unacceptable. I think an interesting kind of question to ask you is like plum suddenly being in charge and having the levers of power at her disposal. Um, living in the real. You know and I've I've spoken to you about this you're well aware of where we are, we're in a place and you know people can argue with me if they like, but let's just say, for example, we accept that three quarters of our built environment is poorly ventilated, just as a as a mind game. We're not going to fix everything cool at once. This isn't something where you suddenly find yourself in charge, plum, and you go right.

Simon: 1:07:36

By christmas next year, all indoor spaces are going to be x? Um, what's the game plan like? Where do you target? Where are the high risk buildings? Where should we be thinking about accessibility first, do you think? And what does that look like in your mind? You must have thought this through like moving towards an end goal. What does good start to look like? In what spaces first?

Plum: 1:08:07

So I mean, in our report we kind of set out a number of recommendations and the first one is the recognition of indoor air quality as an accessibility issue and how it applies to the Disability Discrimination Act. And in our discussion earlier, where we didn't get to was alongside the Disability Discrimination Act sits the premises standards, and the premises standards define the accessibility features that are necessary for public spaces. Indoor air quality performance standards should naturally fit within those premises standards so that we have a standard for people to aim for. So that's number one, like just the recognition that this is an accessibility issue. The legislation already says that spaces should be safe for people with chronic health conditions. Hang on a second. We haven't thought about the role of indoor air. We should do that.

Simon: 1:09:03

Yeah.

Plum: 1:09:03

And then OK, so in theory it applies to you.

Simon: 1:09:07

We'll skip ahead to the bit where that's been a success head to the bit where that's been a success and and it's recognized. Sorry to pause you there. That that's where we define the equivalent of what the angle of a ramp should be and how wide it should be and where what height a button should be to open a door. That that's what that building legislate. This is where we say this is what we consider, with the knowledge that we have today, as being adequate air quality to allow for inclusion of people with chronic health conditions, kind of thing and we'll move from adequate all the way through to, you know, good, better, best, um, all the way through to accessible, you know.

Plum: 1:09:47

And so what is?

Plum: 1:09:47

the accessible standard, you know, and that should be the highest of the high um. So, assuming that we've, assuming that we've got that, there are obviously a number of settings that I think are priorities and again we define these in our report as being education. We have the you know, we already there's, there's other legislation that already applies. So, ignoring the disability discrimination act for a second. And there are, you know, legislation, legislation that apply to ensure the education environments are safe. You know that all children can access a safe learning environment, and those aren't just australian standards. There's the education act in the uk. There's the un convention, the rights of the child. You know that there are, you, there are international and national legislation that apply to schools.

Plum: 1:10:36

Schools obviously are important because, you know, in much like the same way, we wouldn't expect a child to boil water to make it safe for them to drink, not just because they could get burnt, but because of the burden of responsibility. We can't be putting the responsibility for breathing safe air onto children. It's, it's too much. We should, we share the air and therefore, you know that has to be something that you know, that is that is done. Um, from this, you know, from a systemic level, not just, not just an individual responsibility. It's too much to expect children to have to wear a mask. Um, they shouldn't be responsible for that and they shouldn't, you know, not for their own health, but also for the health of their families.

Simon: 1:11:19

The air should be safe, not least because it's the pointy end of the hierarchy of controls. Anyway, you know like, as a, as an approach to protecting yourself from an environmental risk, wearing a mask is literally the last thing on the list, you know, yeah and yeah, and yet somehow that's where we've ended up, you know, with families being told, no, you can't donate a hepa filter.

Plum: 1:11:42

Um, you know the window? In new south wales, which is which is where we live in in sydney, the majority of schools are naturally ventilated. So on a day where it's too hot, too cold, too smoky, too, whatever, the windows are shut, the doors are shut. So what are you left? With ventilation, nothing.

Simon: 1:12:04

Yeah.

Plum: 1:12:08

And so I mean to your question about what are the things that I would go to first, mechanically ventilating schools would be the absolute first thing on the list Because I think it could have such a huge impact on community, on the individual child and their life course. Child and their life course, you know there was recent, there was a paper published last week that basically showed that infections in early life and the burden of infections in early life actually have a significant impact on health over the life course and therefore, you know, to the point around children got to be children absolutely, but actually not all of these infections are good.

Simon: 1:12:54

No.

Plum: 1:12:55

Most of them are not, so children have to be kept safe. But also what?

Plum: 1:12:59

about the workers in the classroom. So, from a workplace health and safety perspective, teachers we know teachers are at particularly increased risk of exposure, particularly increased risk of developing long COVID as an example of exposure, particularly increased risk of developing long COVID as an example. Women are particularly at increased risk. These are very female dominated workforces. And then you kind of move from education to health care. Health care settings have to be safe.

Plum: 1:13:35

It blows my mind that we do so much from a, you know, from from an infection prevention control perspective around hand hygiene. You know all of this. You know, if you want to talk about hygiene theater, you know hand hygiene. Wash your hands, it's an airborne infection, but don't worry, wash your hands, it's. It's clearly not an appropriate uh recommendation. Um, we do huge amounts to reduce infections like MRSA and when an MRSA infection occurs we do all of this investigation to discover how did it occur? Where was the failing? How do we ensure that failing doesn't occur again? And then with airborne infections we just go huh, oh well, you know.

Plum: 1:14:19

I mean in New South Wales last year there was data that was produced that basically showed that more than 2,000 people caught COVID in New South Wales hospitals. Of the people that died from those infections. They actually accounted for 14% of all COVID deaths in New South Wales last year. So 14% of people who died of COVID in New South Wales caught their infection in a healthcare setting. And I just don't understand how anyone is okay with that and why we're not falling over ourselves to kind of immediately put a stop to the hospital requiring infections. I mean from my own experience my aunt, my 80-year-old aunt, had a fall last March at home in the middle of the night. She had an infection. She was delirious. She got taken to hospital by ambulance. Seven weeks later she was still in hospital and she acquired a COVID infection. It just had a significant impact on her, on her health. Um, you know, she was already kind of, you know, early stages of dementia. It's had a huge impact.

Plum: 1:15:24

Why are we okay with infecting our elderly or any patients in health care when in fact, we can clean the air? We can. We can use hepa filters, we can use merv 13 filters and ventilation. We can increase the ventilation rates. We can clean the air we can. We can use hepa filters, we can use merv 13 filters and ventilation. We can increase the ventilation rates we can use. We can use uv that we have. So we, we have a whole, and you pointed it out with classrooms.

Simon: 1:15:47

Plum that that often cleaning the air isn't something that requires somebody to make a conscious choice of in a space. All they have to do is be in that space and breathe to receive the benefits of an engineering decision that was made by somebody previously. Yeah, hand washing and hygiene and and all of that is a constant process and signs up everywhere a constant cotton in my wife's in healthcare and it's a constant process of awareness and training and retraining to keep people on it. For that and it is important we know it's had massive impacts on hospital-acquired infections. Yet air quality is an engineering decision. That's made once is an engineering decision that's made once is maintained annually probably, and takes that risk out of the equation.

Plum: 1:16:50

It's bizarre isn't it in that sense that a space that should be so clued into?

Plum: 1:16:53

It isn't, and I really kind of wonder about the reasons behind that. And I don't know if you've kind of kept up with the COVID inquiry that's happening in the UK. But in Module 3, which was at the end of last year, you know they focused on healthcare settings and they had a number of, you know a number of experts provide testimony, one of whom was Professor Clive Beggs was Professor Clive Beggs and his testimony, which is very clear, around airborne transmission and the things that we need to do to prevent airborne transmission. And then at the same time, in the same module, you've got the IPC cell lead saying it's droplet transmission is the predominant mode and therefore a surgical mask is, you know, is just as useful as a, you know, as an FFP3. You've got Baroness Hallett literally sitting there with an aura, a 3M aura, and a surgical mask. Are you honestly telling me that these are the same? I mean, I kind of I lose the words because it's it's just so mind blowing that you can have that level of denial.

Plum: 1:18:08

Of course an FFP3 mask is more effective than a surgical mask. A surgical mask has gaping holes in it and through those gaping holes the air gets sucked and isn't filtered.

Simon: 1:18:16

Yeah, and what's the worst that's going to happen? You're going to clean the air and probably reduce flu, cold season, other hospital acquired infections, maybe reduce a bit of absenteeism, who knows? Even, you know, improve some sat scores and education scores of kids like. The co-benefits of this, yeah, are enormous, yeah, and and should and could stand on their own two feet just for the value that they bring. So by by improving accessibility, we also happen to improve the outcomes for everybody else that's sitting in that classroom or recovering in hospital or whatever it is. It's yeah, yeah.

Simon: 1:19:00

It seems like a no brainer in a lot of ways, but we know that there's something about air quality. We see this with radon. Actually, radon is quite analogous to this and radon is the slam dunkiest of slam dunks when it comes to air quality. It's one of the few air pollutants that there's very few question marks over. We know exactly how to measure it. We know exactly the impacts it has on public health. It can't be mistaken for anything else. It doesn't transmit in any other way. We know exactly where it comes from and the cost to society is large. Yet, as a human species will do almost anything to ignore it, um, it's to the point it just doesn make any sense.

Simon: 1:19:56

Yeah, you know that. And study, you know, the friend of mine, james mcgrath, has been on the podcast. You know talks about studies where they were giving in a high radon area, giving radon tests away, analogous to yes, just yeah, I could imagine you like it's like yeah, yeah, giving the tests away for free and people going no thanks. And when they, when they did the studies, they had a street, 20, 30 homes all with high levels of radon. So few, so few people took the test that they had a load of money left over. So they offered free remediation to people with high radon. Half the people didn't want it.

Simon: 1:20:37

And you can argue it's this, it's something about radioactivity or some weird psychological something or other, but it's just this. A lot of the. The risk of air quality is so, so, um, esoteric in nature and hard to explain and often chronic and long-term by, in its nature, um, the acute impacts of things like carbon monoxide and covid and stuff aside, but the most of it is long term that somehow we seem to just be able to kick it into the long grass mentally as a species. It's not a risk we seem to have found a way of framing in a way that creates action. And I think that's what's interesting again about this angle of accessibility that it brings it to the four in a in a bite-sized chunk way, where we're saying, you know, we're not leaning on fluffy kind of cognitive benefit, questionnaire outcome type scenarios, this is just a fundamental fairness thing. There's a bunch of people who can't get access to buildings because they're not fit for purpose, sorted out. Oh, and, by the way, it fixes a load of stuff for everybody else as well as a co-benefit. Um, it's quite a nice way of doing it, because it it stops us having to think about this at a population wide level, yeah, and can get us to think about the personal story, the individual, that this is a building for a human that isn't being given the the foundations for life, whether that's education or recovery or end of life care or whatever it is that they deserve.

Simon: 1:22:34

Yeah, because of something as menial as somebody couldn't be asked to spend money on a fan. Yeah, kind of, you know, boils it down to that basic nature, doesn't it? And that that's just unfair and, as a human species, that triggers us like fairness is a thing for us. You know, I just had Jack Harvey, jack clark's on the podcast. Um, when this goes live, probably a few weeks ago, and we talk about that with noise in the podcast as well that one of the triggers for poor health and poor health outcomes with noise is the feeling of unfairness. If I feel that I'm in an unfair position, that not only has not only has a mental health effect, but it has a physical health effect on us. So fairness is an important trigger, I think, and I think the accessibility thing is a nice window into that, because, regardless of the esoteric global population benefits of air quality blah blah blah, this is just unfair on john down the road who can't go to school.

Simon: 1:23:46

Yes, because the school's ventilation shit like sorted out why should?

Plum: 1:23:51

why should john be the person carrying the burden of responsibility to make sure he doesn't get sick with something that could put him in hospital? Why should John bear the responsibility of not killing his parent who has a chronic? You know, it's, it's, it's, it's huge, and I mean there's a, there's a quote I like hearing Lydia talk about. You know, it's our fundamental right to have access to clean air and I really couldn't agree more. It really does come down to are we OK to exclude this person, this group of people, which isn't a small percentage of the population, from safe access? Are we okay with this group of people, this person, having to bear the burden of responsibility for keeping themselves safe? You know, for so many years I've sort of you know, every time a birthday party invitation comes in for the kids, like, okay, well, where is it? Is it outdoors? Great, great, great. It's outdoors. Yes, we can go to this one. Oh, no, this one's at the, you know, the really poorly ventilated bowling alley.

Plum: 1:25:02

No, we're not going to that one, you know, and it's just yeah, it's really exhausting, you know, to have to kind of make those individual risk assessments on every single thing that we do. Can the kids go to the school excursion? Well, it's a 45 minute drive away. It's going to be on a bus. The co2 will be awful, that you know. I guess I'll be driving them there again. You know it's, it's.

Plum: 1:25:26

It shouldn't come down to individuals to sort of to have to make those decisions, and especially for for kids, where their decisions, where they become excluded, they become a target for bullying. It's hard enough being a kid, you know it's even harder to be a kid. That's different, you know, and you know for, for for kids wearing masks to protect themselves. You know even my, I mean you know my daughter Alice, she gets, you know, she gets bullied. For why didn't you come on the bus? I didn't come on the bus because mum's a real meanie, um, and she won't let me get on a bus where the co2 is over 8 000. Gosh, she's. You know she's so boring, um, you know, and it's just do you know it. Just it shouldn't come, it just shouldn't be a thing. The, the ventilation on the bus should be excellent. Ventilation on the bus should also be good because of the cognitive functioning of the driver.

Simon: 1:26:20

And I don't want a driver driving 32 kids with CO2 levels at 6,000 ppm. Thank you very much.

Plum: 1:26:31

And for the driver it's a co-benefit yeah.

Plum: 1:26:35

And for a driver it's a workplace health and safety issue as well, not just because you know he could be a bit drowsy, but because he could be infected and that could lead to time off. So it's just there are so many benefits, there are so many arguments for why there are so few arguments against, against, and yet we still face these barriers and I really hope that kind of, I really hope we can crash through those barriers with you know the. The way that I kind of first started thinking about accessibility in this problem was, as it being a chink in the armor. You know, it's a, it's a crack that we that should, we should in theory be able to pry.

Plum: 1:27:17

We can get something in there, yeah, and just crack the whole thing open, Because I mean you and I have spoken before about healthy buildings. Healthy buildings, what better thing than to champion accessible buildings, healthy and safe and inclusive?

Simon: 1:27:35

Yeah.

Plum: 1:27:40

And then everybody, kind of everybody, starts thinking about. You know so much of the advice that we see, you know, and even you know the state of victoria here, as you know, are still very good on their advice around code um, you know, and there was some something that they put out this week, you know. Know, meet outdoors. And then there are things like wear a mask if you're going to be seeing people who are vulnerable. How do you know? How do you know if someone is vulnerable?

Plum: 1:28:05

My husband doesn't walk around, you know, with a big sticker on his chest saying I have chronic kidney disease. I don't walk around with a thing saying I have really severe long COVID. People don't walk around with a thing saying I have cyst, severe long COVID. People don't walk around with a thing saying I have cystic fibrosis, I have cancer. You know, it's very difficult. These are invisible, invisible health conditions, invisible disabilities, and this is sort of goes back to kind of our invisible inclusion program. It's called the invisible inclusion program because the disabilities are invisible, but the solution is also invisible, you know, and that, that, I think, is why it's such a tough problem for people to kind of yeah but the one thing we can do is make spaces safer.

Simon: 1:28:47

I made a note when you were talking earlier and it was an interesting uh proposition to put to you.

Simon: 1:28:54

I talked about the fact that so much of our built environment probably underperforms in the first instance and I said you know we, we even bringing buildings to adequate would solve, and you were saying, well, we could bring them to good and better and best.

Simon: 1:29:10

And I was trying to imagine when you said that, what, what that might look like? Um, but in many environments, places like schools and health care facilities, the standards for flow rates and air change rates in those spaces can be pretty high anyway. So so often, often, the standards that we have I know a lot of them have been developed for comfort, and you know odors and you know we can argue that the flow rates are way too low, and you know things like ashray 241 has tried to address that, but in a lot of spaces the flow rates aren't far off, you know where they need to be to significantly, because that there is with infection risk and a friend and colleague of mine, ben jones, would argue this very strongly that there is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to infection risks and we can't just keep turning up the dial forever.

Simon: 1:30:06

There are consequences of ventilating at 32 air changes an hour, right, um, but even even at some of the standards we already have, that adequate or good air quality is not bad, I mean, it was significantly reduced the risk. So in this roadmap, to moving buildings from poorly ventilated, naturally ventilated classrooms where they're shut at winter or shut in summer, wherever you live in the world, it causes you to close them down. Um, the reality is those rooms are sitting at a tenth, a quarter, a third or whatever it is, of what they should be. Um, so even getting it to the minimum is pretty good. Um, what's your kind of view on that? When you, when you, start to look around at some of the standards and guidance that you're seeing for infection risk, does that give you some confidence that there are some mechanisms there to start thinking about our built environment from an infection risk perspective?

Plum: 1:31:16

yeah, definitely, and I think, and I think astro 241 is a really great example of setting, I guess, a setting, a standard, but what we really need is a performance standard. Isn't it like we need something to see how is this building performing right now, today?

Plum: 1:31:33

yeah, you know not, not at a, not at a point in time the thing about. And we did a lot of consultation, like when we were writing our report. We did a lot of consultation with you know, with a number of experts and I'm super grateful, you know, to, to so many um, you know people, I I describe myself as an amateur indoor air quality enthusiast. You know I I really only kind of started thinking about indoor air quality five years ago, so I I'm really grateful for the expertise of people who've been thinking about this for a lot longer than I have. And what we kind of where we got to in the in the consultation with our report is a we needed performance standards. Ashrae 241 effectively sets a safe standard. What we need is a performance standard to get that to apply in real time.

Plum: 1:32:20

The conversations that our position as an organization has always been that infection risk management mode should apply at all times and in all places, because at any given time you could have someone who's at significantly increased risk of poor health outcomes following exposure to airborne pathogens or airborne pollutants. So it isn't just about you know a pandemic being declared and the risk there being. You know the significantly increased risk that significantly increased risk can occur at any time for a person who has a chronic health condition if they're exposed to someone who's infectious with flu or SARS or you know, or whatever it is. So infection risk management mode effectively should be a standard that we're always seeking. And of course the other problem of waiting for a pandemic to be declared is the horse is bolted. So you know we don't want to be waiting until you know community transmission is so high that suddenly we go, oh on, let's quickly turn old buildings onto infection risk management mode. Let's actually be proactive and avoid the infections that occur before that mode gets implemented. So 241 at all times in all public spaces is effectively what we're sort of seeking, and you don't have to do that by kind of turning up the ventilation the out, you know the outdoor ventilation so that it's, you know, pumping through outdoor air and causing your energy use to skyrocket. You know we can do it with filtration and uv and and and other technologies. You know kind kind of a Swiss cheese type approach that's bespoke to the setting. You know I mean in terms of you know where is a New South Wales classroom sitting right now on the spectrum of good, better, best, you know, with the windows closed it's. You know it's pretty shocking. I think you've also got.

Plum: 1:34:17

Obviously, professor Morosco published the blueprint for mandating indoor air quality standards in March last year, which really kind of set four parameters CO2, pm2.5, and ventilation rates and they were very clear in that report that jurisdictions could lower or raise the thresholds that they had set. And so, in consultation with her, through the writing of our report, where we landed was 241 as the. This is how you create a safe indoor space that protects occupants from exposure to airborne pathogens. Use the parameters from that blueprint to set a performance standard and create an accessible indoor air quality performance standard that effectively reduces the risk of exposure to pathogens to the lowest practicable level. And I think if we do that we will have such an impact not just on COVID, on flu, on RSV, on measles, on all of these infectious diseases, current diseases and future. You know future, future variants and you know if H5N1 in the US takes off, wouldn't it be nice that we already had indoor air quality standards that mean that actually it's got nowhere to go.

Simon: 1:35:49

Yeah.

Plum: 1:35:50

Because actually those trains of transmission just don't occur in the first place and there's always a kind of discussion in the kind of the immunocompromised community around short-range and long-range transmission. Obviously, implementing indoor air quality standards that effectively lower the risk of exposure to airborne pathogens is about far-field transmission and you'll never really kind of do anything for, you know, far-field transmission and you'll never really kind of do anything for, you know, n95 masking is the only real way to, you know, prevent near-field transmission and really is why N95 masking in healthcare should be the standard, but in schools we're never going to. We don't want masks, we want, you know, let's use the engineering controls that we have to ensure that the far-field transmission isn't occurring. And when the far-field transmission isn't occurring, actually the R number will decrease significantly. Actually your chance of exposure to someone who's infectious will also be lowered and therefore the near field transmission risk decreases too yeah so we can crack both nuts um with with this, with, you know, with indoor air quality.

Simon: 1:37:06

So I you know, for, for people who kind of argue to that, I still think there's, I still think there's potential to reduce that as well yeah, I mean it'd be a fabulous position to be in, to be having the kind of vaccine conversation where you'd reduced the risk significantly enough, where people were questioning whether or not it's worth taking a vaccine or not they had, that they're in the luxurious position of thinking they don't have to worry about polio or something like that, that our indoor spaces were safe enough, that we have we do manage to reduce pandemics and infection risks in communities and so on, to the point where people are going well, is it really worth it? You know it's a that's a good position to be in to get that far down the road. I mean, in a way and I have this conversation a lot with housing organizations this is about with a lot of risks, and anybody that's kind of filled in a risk assessment form kind of knows this mental space you get into A lot of things with risks is just being able to park something and say, yes, I've done what I need to there. Now I can worry about the other stuff. Because, let's be frank, if you're somebody with chronic health conditions, you've got far more important things to be worrying about than the building that you're going into. This is about being able to park that problem. This is something you shouldn't have to be thinking about. Problem, this is something you shouldn't have to be thinking about. So the goal here is to check that box and, frankly, move on to something else that, because we should. This is an engineering problem that if we solve it, we can worry about the next engineering problem, um it, the.

Simon: 1:38:55

The problem here isn't that there aren't solutions, it's the scale of the problem. That, I think, is the fundamental blocker that anybody with any understanding of their sector looks into their sector and goes jesus, where do I start? You know, I don't have any money anyway. Like, how do I fix that problem? Because any one of those sectors healthcare, education, residential care they've got enough battles to be fighting, never mind having to fundamentally shift a large swathe of their built environment up a gear. Um, and again I go back to maybe that's the, the, the magic of the accessibility thing. A bit like we faced with accessibility with as accessibility for um, wheelchairs and things a decade or two ago that we just need to start we like you gotta, we gotta figure out where the risky environments are, start there and get going.

Plum: 1:40:03

That there are targets, that there are rules, that by 2030 all schools, or whatever you know, you start figuring out what that roadmap looks like and you start mapping it out yeah, you know, there's a good, there's a good analogy and I and it's, and it works because it's in, it's already in every room, in every public space is fire and smoke detectors yeah at some point a decision was made. Oh my god, this is a huge problem.

Plum: 1:40:34

We've really got to do something about fire safety. We can't have, you know, we can't have buildings burning down. That's all. That creates quite a health risk, and at some point, fire detectors and smoke detectors were put in every single room and every single public space In people's homes as well, and it was determined that actually, we need to do this. Why is it therefore a kind of a mental hurdle to leap over to say we should have an air quality monitor in every public room, in every public space?

Simon: 1:41:09

So we're not just measuring for smoke.

Simon: 1:41:11

We're measuring for More than that if you build buildings I mean, I was involved in building an office building there a few years ago Not only do we recognise that we need smoke alarms and detectors in every building, but we also make allowances for people with disabilities in the provision of that equipment. Where we have phones that people that are disabled can ring to a particular point in the building so the fire service knows where they are to come and get them that lights and there's braille and there's stuff for people with visual impairments. You have to have flashing lights so people that can't hear an alarm though. You know like we figured that problem out. Like this again, it's just an engineering problem and the wreck and I would imagine that we're killing far more people a year with air quality than we were killing them with buildings burning down yeah.

Plum: 1:42:06

And so there's another really good analogy is smoking smoking being banned in indoor public spaces. I don't know where it's got to in Europe and in the UK, but also in Australia, you also cannot smoke outdoors in a restaurant as well as indoors, because of the risk for hospitality workers being exposed while working serving in those outdoor areas. So we, you know, as well as the fire stuff, we've already we've already taken steps on preventing exposure to cigarette secondhand smoke indoors and outdoors because we recognize that the risk is is great there. I mean, there are other examples around, you know drink driving.

Plum: 1:42:51

I find drink driving to be a really interesting one because the risk isn't just to the driver, the drunk driver, to harm themselves, but the drunk driver can also cause harm to others. So, put you know, the infectious person isn't just causing harm to themselves, doesn't just have the opportunity to cause harm to their own health, but they can cause harm to others. And and I think that there are so many different ways that when we, just because we share air, once you start thinking about that and the role of our shared responsibilities and our responsibility for the health of others and you start thinking, okay, well, hang on a second. This. Actually, this creates this accessibility challenge, because everybody should be able to access these shared spaces without risk of permanent harm, short-term, long-term harm. Then, well, we've already acted on so many other other, on so many other issues that are very similar. What are we waiting for in terms of making our shared air safer for everyone to breathe?

Simon: 1:44:07

yeah, and what you're fundamentally talking about is is creating great spaces anyway. Yeah, you know that that this isn't creating an environment that's somehow going to be an impediment to normal people. Quote unquote you know the the others here aren't imposing something that requires you you know, I don't know to to figure out how to open the door now that goes opens automatically for disabled. Like, do I press the button, do I? You know there's none of that. You're walking into spaces. They're just going to have good quality air in them. Like, yeah, who doesn't want that anyway? So, like there's this fabulous, you know, for forcing this through and helping get this through. You get the benefit of your kid going into a classroom who's might actually get a better test result because the teacher isn't absent as much and she gets more consistency in the teaching. You've got kids that are concentrating better. And you know we all understand the three and a half, three and a half past three slump in the afternoon in a classroom. Like you, look at the co2 levels.

Plum: 1:45:10

We now understand why that is I, I always laugh about that, because when I was doing my master's in in london in public health, I studied um at the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine and I used to. I'd go to the gym at lunchtime and then I'd come back for the afternoon lecture and I'd always have a sleep. This one lecture, theater. I always had to sleep because I was like what is wrong with me? Why do I go back?

Plum: 1:45:33

god, I must be really tired and and actually now I'm like oh, maybe it wasn't me, maybe it was just that the room was really stuffy and that it was leading me to you know, unfortunately.

Simon: 1:45:44

I think it's also something to do with the body clock. The three and a half, three and a half, three, four o'clock slump, it's, it's, there's a cycle thing because you sleep at the deepest at that kind of time at night. It's a, it's a thing. But yeah, absolutely, um, what, what can people do? Plum to support your work locally in australia, um, but also more broadly, internationally, like obviously you've got the website and the report. What what are you looking for from the community more broadly to help push this issue of accessibility in the built environment?

Plum: 1:46:21

I mean so? I mean, ultimately, we're you know we're on a mission to get indoor air quality recognized as an accessibility and inclusion issue. We want people you know working in indoor air quality to start talking about it in those terms. You know, imagine, you know, I kind of I imagine a day where you know there's a star rating system. You know you walk into Woolworths, which is one of the shopping centres you know here in Australia, and there's a rainbow sticker on the door. Next to that sticker should be a safe air badge, you know, that says this is you know, and the live CO2 and PM 2.5 monitoring that shows people this is a you know that says this is you know, and the live CO2 and PM 2.5 monitoring that shows people this is a you know, this is a safe space. Making the invisible visible and bringing indoor air quality as an accessibility issue forward, I think will have a huge impact on general public awareness the ability for businesses businesses who have great air quality to start talking about their air quality from an accessibility perspective.

Plum: 1:47:26

You mentioned earlier about businesses wanting to be inclusive employers. Most businesses do want to be inclusive employers. So for those who are already committed to being an inclusive employer, because they know that there are benefits to be inclusive employers. So, for those who are already committed to, you know, to being an inclusive employer, because they know that there are benefits to be had not just for them but for their staff Start to and you know, if you've got good indoor air quality, start putting the two together. Or come and talk to us and we will help you do that, because not only can it make your workplace more accessible and more inclusive and more productive, but it can also help drive a broader conversation around the air that we share and how we can make indoor air safe for everyone. And that's that's really, that's that's that's our, that's our vision, you know, create a world where everyone can breathe safely indoors.

Plum: 1:48:19

Um, so we're really, you know, if, if it resonates, you know, with, with your listeners, you know, do get in touch because it's it's not just an australian, it's not just an australian thing, it's a, it's an everywhere, everyone, everywhere, problem. Um, and I, and I know that it's a, I know that it's a solvable problem as well. This is the sort of the funny thing, you know. I wish I'd been able to put the idea of you know, hey, why didn't you found a charity. I wish I'd been able to put that as an idea back into the box. It would have been an awful lot simpler. Um, you know, but actually the reality is the solution is so obvious, it's so achievable that why don't we just kind of get on and do it and then?

Plum: 1:49:05

move forwards, you know, for the person living with cancer, not have to worry about picking up an infection, just go back to worrying about I'm going to beat my cancer, I'm, you know, and not have to worry about the fact oh goodness, now I'm civilian, you know, compromised and you know it. Just, it doesn't make any sense that we should be adding and risk it.

Simon: 1:49:29

Risk is a risk, management is a journey like so, and, to coin a famous pandemic term, um, for the topic of this podcast, you know, letting perfection be the enemy of the good. Yeah, um, you've got a multi-story building. Start with one floor, have one floor that's safe for visitors and workers that are vulnerable. If that's all you can do, uh, understand, you know, I was just trying to think of analogies while you were talking there. But like it's like. It's like having a purpose-built bus for accessibility for wheelchair users great if you've got one, but if you don't have some ramps in the bus that can get somebody on if they need to, or a protocol to that, people understand how, when to get the right bus, or whatever it is like.

Simon: 1:50:26

There are all sorts of ways of providing accessibility that don't have to be perfect. We can start and we can make an impact on our built environment. That doesn't require us to start from scratch every time. We can think about what. Once we understand the problem, we can start to think in ways to mitigate.

Simon: 1:50:48

And I love risk for that, because it's not it's not a black and white, binary problem to solve. It's something that's a journey. It's something that we have to apply common sense to and understand the nuance of where we are and where we've got to get to and the skills and the resources that we have available, and so on. But it starts with sitting down, recognizing that that represents a risk and putting plans in place to mitigate it. That's all you've got to do and just start that process and it just gets lumped in with all of the other things you've got to do for managing risk in your buildings. But it needs to be a line item. That's the starting point, doesn't it? It has to make it on there somewhere in your annual risk review of your buildings and your assets.

Plum: 1:51:43

Is accessibility as a result of air quality and and figure out where you are I mean if you, if you even go back from it as an accessibility risk for businesses, businesses making the risk assessment of hang on a second, how come all of my staff are maxing out all of their sick leave now?

Plum: 1:52:04

yeah well, that's a risk. It's a risk to a business. How do we solve that? Because we're losing so many work days to people being sick, whether they're sick because of something they've acquired in the office or they're sick because they're caring for their children who've picked up something at school. How come everyone is now using all their sick leave, and we're seeing that in Australia, we're seeing huge increases in sick leave.

Plum: 1:52:30

I know the data in the UK and the US is increasing on that as well. So how do we as an organisation reduce the risk of increased sick leave? We can reduce it by improving the quality of the air that we breathe in the office, but we can also reduce it by improving our sick leave policies, where we encourage people to stay home when they are sick so that they don't come into the office and infect others and then have, you know, ongoing transmission cycles that you know have a have a bottom line impact, because actually you've got everybody taking sick leave. There are so many things that we can do and there are so many ways in which the risk appears. Um, yeah, the only thing we really have to do is pull our head out of the sand and say we have the ability to do something about this.

Simon: 1:53:26

We just need to stop ignoring it yeah, and it all starts with a conversation plum. It's been absolutely brilliant talking to you, uh, and absolutely fascinating. You know, one of the things I love about doing this podcast is perspectives, and this has been a refreshing one and and an eye-opening one for me personally and and it's got me pretty much everybody I've spoken to since I last spoke to you has had accessibility shoved down their throats ad nauseam. So, uh, it's had an impact on me and hopefully an impact on the listeners and just get, get them to just view that built environment through that lens and have a think about it. I think it's quite transformative in that way that it's a, it's a perspective that resonates with people and, surprisingly, hasn't hasn't been thought of before. So I wish you all the luck with it. I think it's absolutely brilliant and if listeners want to find out more, I'll provide some show notes and links and stuff in the in the comments below. So thanks a million. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.

Plum: 1:54:38

Thanks, simon, it's been awesome talking to you, and thanks for your interest in what we're doing. You know it's really exciting to spread the word about this as an accessibility issue, because it really is something that affects all of us. So thank you, I really appreciate it.

Simon: 1:54:54

Thanks for listening. Before you go go, can ask a favor. If you enjoyed the podcast and know someone else who might be interested, do spread the word and let's keep building this community. And do check out the youtube channel by the same name and subscribe, if you can, as there will be additional content posted here quite regularly. This podcast was brought to you in partnership with AECO, ultra Protect, imbiote and Aeroco all great companies who share the vision of this podcast. Your support of them helps their support of the show. Do check them out in the links and at airqualitymattersnet. See you next week.