#60 - Corinne Mandin, Paweł Wargocki & Henry Burridge: Transforming Classroom Air Quality – Cognitive Impact, Health Challenges, and Sustainable Solutions

This episode, live from the Eurovent Conference on School Air Quality we discusses the crucial relationship between indoor air quality and children's health and cognitive performance in classrooms. We analyse the current state of air quality in schools, the need for effective monitoring and improvement strategies, and the potential benefits for students' learning and well-being. 

• Engaging in important conversations about air quality in schools 
• Understanding the effects of indoor pollutants on children’s health 
• Holistic approaches to indoor environmental quality assessment 
• Introducing the TAIL benchmarking system for schools 
• The importance of monitoring and community involvement 
• Advocating for solutions to improve indoor air quality 
• Addressing the educational needs of the next generation regarding air quality

Eurovent IAQ Event

Corinne Mandin

Pawel Wargocki

Henry Burridge

Chapters

• 0:00 Indoor Air Quality in Schools
• 15:01 Improving Indoor Air Quality in Schools
• 30:16 Improving Indoor Air Quality in Schools
• 38:13 Enhancing Indoor Air Quality in Schools
• 44:26 Evolving Indoor Air Quality Solutions
• 59:16 Optimal Indoor Environment in Schools

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 rather special podcast recorded in January on location at the Eurovent Conference on Air Quality in Schools in London with some friends of the show Corinne Mandin, Head of the Laboratory of Epidemiology from the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority in France, the ASNR, Paweł Wargoczki, Professor at DTU, and Henry Burridge, Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. Air Quality Matters was delighted to bring the podcast on the road for its first of many this year formal outing on site live from one of the important air quality events of the year. Your event, in partnership with CIBC and BISA, organized an outstanding lineup of speakers for an afternoon and evening of discussion and collaboration on air quality in schools, with contributions not only from my guests on the podcast but also the likes of Sani Dimitropoulou from the UK Health Security Agency and Kath Noakes from Leeds, and many more. They came together under the umbrella title of Breathing Achievement into Every Classroom, with presentations and discussions from the what we know now to the what do we do next?

Simon: 1:55

On that note, myself, Corinne, Pavel and Henry sat down to talk about the themes of the day, bringing together in conversation their vast wealth of knowledge on the subject, from decades of monitoring through the French Air Quality Observatory to cutting edge research from schools today. If you're interested in air quality in schools, kids' performance and health and what the future looks like in this regard, I can't think of three better people to sit down with and have a conversation. I hope you enjoy this one. Don't forget to check out the sponsors in the show notes. This is a conversation with Corinne Mandin, Pavel Rogochky and Henry Burridge. I guess the question is is if we believe that the indoor environment is essential in classrooms for both students and people that work in those environments, are we able, as we sit here today, to be able to describe what that looks like? As we sit talking about classrooms and indoor air quality today? What's your sense of where we are today with with those environments?

Pawel: 3:06

first of all I want to say that we have never doubted that there are effects, so we really didn't know you know how big the effects are, what the condition should be. We learned from adults that there are effects, so why not there should be for children and but we didn't know at which levels that they will be occurring. What is the best environment or not the best, but optimal environment for children? So this information we have today, we know what is the optimal environment for children. And from the perspective of school environment, we need to talk about the learning as a first step. Of course, the health conditions should be always maintained, meaning there should be no risks to health, and those risks to health are difficult to actually identify in schools for many reasons. We believe that if we go to the learning or cognitive effects, we would be also tackling the problems with health, but that has to be documented. So if we go with the learning, we know that what should be the conditions for the thermal environment in schools?

Pawel: 4:28

We know very well for temperate and cold climates. We have less evidence coming from subtropical and tropical climates, but we believe that there is a way of extrapolating information into those climates or into those regions. We have to admit that these are less wealthy regions and then the schools probably suffer from many more problems. But overheating and climate change creates a huge challenge for particularly those climates, all those regions. We know about air quality, and here air quality is a very huge issue because on one hand, we are talking about air quality effects or ventilation effects on learning of children. On the other hand, we know that air quality or ventilation effects on learning of children. On the other hand, we know that air quality or ventilation will also contribute to reducing the risk of infections.

Pawel: 5:35

Schools with children are potentially places for outbreaks for different respiratory infections, and this is where the health comes into the picture. Then we know about light or luminous environment, and this is probably the easiest, except that access to daylight and view out is probably the most important elements here. And then we know about acoustic environment, and we know that acoustic environment is particularly important for low grades and particularly important for double language children. I mean if they speak two languages they may have troubles.

Pawel: 6:24

Children with the ADHD, which is a concentration difficulties these are particularly the ones who will be affected by too much noise and particularly by background noise which is too high and, of course, reverberation time. That could be easily done. We don't know, though, how those conditions interact. So we don't know whether there is an interaction, or whether there is one condition that probably will deal with some problems of the other, or is there a combined effect, or is there interaction? That we don't know and we need to learn more. And also, we have very little data on teachers, but here we can only guess that whenever we provide the conditions for children, there will be also good conditions for teachers.

Simon: 7:27

So what you're laying out there is a picture of indoor environmental quality in the frame of thermal comfort, acoustics, light and indoor air quality and painting a picture on its impact on both cognitive performance, education and outcomes, learning, but also acute and chronic health impacts as well. There's a lot of that's a big piece, isn't it? When you take everything all together, both both air quality and light and sound and thermal comfort all have potential impacts on things like Are we able to separate those, because you say we don't know how well those interact together. Corinne, you've spent a lot of time with the Indoor Air Quality Observatory monitoring schools in the past. Did you consider some of those broader environmental frames as well, like thermal and light and sound, when you were doing that research?

Corinne: 8:30

Yes, we did when we carried out a nationwide survey between 2013 and 2017, based on the random selection of schools across France. So we randomly selected more than 300 schools and then two classrooms per school and instrumented during one week. And we add this over a whole approach measuring indoor air quality, measuring also contaminants in settled dust, because some pollutants that are in the air also adsorb to particles and can settle on the surfaces. And we know that the young children, they have a specific behavior compared with adults. They are putting regularly hand to mouth, so they are also exposed to the organic pollutants or inorganics that are in settled dust on the floor. It can be lead, for example.

Corinne: 9:19

So metals, but also phthalates, polybrominated flame retardants, fluorinated compounds. So we also sampled the settled dust regarding air quality and this aspect. But we measured the background, noise, noise level in these classrooms. We measured also illuminance illuminance on the board, illuminance on the table, because children, this is a learning environment, so we must see. And we measured also, of course, temperature to characterize and describe the thermal comfort. So we add this holistic approach describing the four major components of indoor environmental quality indoor air, thermal comfort, acoustics and light environment.

Simon: 10:07

And in fact, what you've been describing, pavel, to a degree, is TAIL that I know we've talked about before on the podcast and I think, if I remember rightly, you applied some of that benchmarking to some of the work that Corinne did through the observatory. Do I recall that correctly? I think I've seen something around that that's correct.

Pawel: 10:29

We wanted to speak about it later, but to address your point, I think at this time and Corinne has evidence, and this is one big chunk of evidence from one country there is some evidence from other countries, but we haven't been able somehow to put together sort of a database or a sort of an overview, because we know that there are some studies that are in Belgium, there are studies in Nordic countries and other countries, but we don't have that overview for the entire Europe except for the symphony that also Corinne can speak about, the project that was done and supported by the European Commission.

Pawel: 11:16

Coming back to your question, which is a real issue, so at this moment I would rather say that let's deal with all of them. But and then comes Taylor, because we really need to have a method for benchmarking schools and the tale that we, together with Corinne, our PhD student, and other people, developed is actually a method, one of the methods, and we don't know that this is, you know, the golden, you know tool that should be used by everyone. We hope that everyone will use it, but that we need to identify what really the school requires, Because when we looked at the data from observatory, we found that some schools suffer from that and some schools suffer from that problems and this is not like across the board that all the schools would require the same solution.

Henry: 12:23

Yeah.

Pawel: 12:24

So this is what I want to make point is that sometimes, in thinking about the solution to the school problem, is that let's do for all schools the same solution. This is not the case, because I came up with an analogy a few days ago. If you go to a doctor, what does he do with you? First, he sends you to get some blood tests and all other tests to find what are you actually suffering from. He's not giving you the same medicine. Every patient gets the same medicine. So that's the point. This is what we really need to apply that method for schools, and we know then how to act.

Simon: 13:02

And does that resonate? Sorry, karim, yeah, and we know then how to act. And does that?

Corinne: 13:04

resonate. Sorry, karim. Yeah, if I may add, one objective of TAIL also is to have a unique score and sub-scores to make it easy to understand Because what we are discussing is very complex. We have multiple chemical substances, biological pollutants, physical pollutants. So for a teacher or school manager it can be very hard to understand all this. They are measured in different ways, they have different guidelines. Some are not regulated. So having a note explaining that you are red or green or orange, it's easy for the school managers and we think it can help raising awareness among them and can help also the stakeholders to better understand the issues and to be involved in improving the situations.

Simon: 13:52

Yeah, and at the end of the day, we're not doing this just for research purposes. This is to improve outcomes, so we have to provide tools for people to be able to actually have agency Is. What's been said resonated with you, henry, when it come on to sammy about this complexity of the indoor environment. So I think.

Henry: 14:10

I think what's really interesting is you know. The question was you know we believe and pavel quite rightly started by saying you know we're going to answer we's you know what's important for the indoor environment in classrooms, and that's because we're scientists and so we can, you know, based on years of work and the current knowledge, make you know semi-rigorous and well-qualified statements about what is important or not. And what's really interesting about the indoor environment is that, if you, you know, we've all been pupils, so everybody in in in our society has been through school, through being a pupil. We have lots of teachers. If we asked, if we change the we to being the stakeholders of schools, so pupils and teachers and pupils past and present and we asked them what they know is important in the classroom, I think some of these factors they would pick out Noise, light these are factors Odour perhaps, you know, some people might pick out things like stuffiness, but how many people would start to pick out, you know, the air pollution or, more specifically, you know the amount of particulate matter in their classroom or the amount of carbon dioxide or whatever we as scientists would think about.

Henry: 15:40

And I think that's a really big gap, that, um, that when we're defining what is good, we need to think about that in a yes, with rigorous scientific underpinnings, but we need to to only really think about that and how to translate that into better classroom environments. And I think there's two broad routes. One is through sort of monitoring and regulation, which the science has a more direct uh route of application, and the other is through practicalities, like if teachers see that their kids grades are improving, they're going to keep doing, they're there to to provide good education and, you know, enjoy interacting with young people who might behave better in in, you know, uh, a well, a well in a well-conditioned environment, um. And so we somehow need to to think about how to to educate and better communicate um to our, our classroom stakeholders.

Simon: 16:40

Really, and, and all of you have spoken to some degree about the, the impact on performance in the classroom. We hear a lot about that in the indoor air quality community, about the impact of air quality on cognitive performance and so on. Are we able, as we sit here today, to be able to draw those straight lines at this stage and say that this is going to make a tangible difference to school scores in classrooms for pupils taking a classroom from a poor place to a good place? Are those evidence lines there now for us to draw? Because every time I read on this I get conflicting messages that there are so many confounding factors that impact things like tests on cognitive performance. It's hard for us to pin it to one thing or another. But generally, do we have confidence that if we take classrooms from here to there, that people are going to look back at that venture and go well, that was worth it? Like you say, the ROI for doing this is that there's a better outcome. Do you have confidence that that's the case?

Pawel: 18:06

You don't ask me to say that I don't have a confidence. Of course I do. Of course I do. We have to be careful in interpretation of the results. First of all, scientific evidence clearly showed that there are studies, cross-sectional studies, that really show that classrooms with high ventilation less risk for infection, better cognitive performance. Although you can say, of course you can say, well, that is a lot of confounding factors. There's a huge study that was published by actually economists from Harvard School that they looked at the outdoor temperatures and the exit, the results of the exit exams in the United States, across the entire United States. Clear evidence was the elevated outdoor temperatures, poorer exit. So we believe that there will be a shift.

Pawel: 19:07

But it's very difficult to promise anything. So you can put your question in a different way. You can say well, we can guarantee that it will not get better, it will get suddenly. It may suddenly get better, but it won't get worse. Sorry to say so. We can guarantee that because there are so many other factors During the time I put the school from one environment to other environment. There could be other conditions that can cause that, you know. But at least for that aspect I will guarantee you that there will be no any sort of negative effects on their learning.

Simon: 19:44

Yeah, and it comes with code benefits as well. I guess you know you improve, like you say, you improve cognitive performance, but you're probably going to nail absenteeism as well and presenteeism to some degree and perhaps some long-term chronic illnesses and perhaps some acute infection risks. So there's a lot wrapped up in getting the environment right, isn't there?

Corinne: 20:07

And to bring other elements to your question, simon, not on cognitive performance, but regarding health effects, there are not many epidemiological studies regarding indoor air quality, and not in schools especially, but there are some and they have shown that when the formaldehyde concentration increase, the asthma crisis increase. And they have shown also that when there is mold in classrooms, you have more asthma or more wheezing in children. So there were clear quantitative relationships showing this evidence and last year in France we tried to calculate the number of asthma crises that could be avoided if we would reduce the formaldehyde concentration and we obtained between 9,000 and 27,000 asthma events that could be avoided every year if we would reduce the formaldehyde concentration in the classroom. So there are tangible results, quantitative data showing that yes, if you improve indoor air quality, you will improve air sound, you will improve learning. So, to continue, on this.

Pawel: 21:07

On a population level, let's say on a regional level or maybe on a country level. On a population level, let's say on a regional level or maybe on a country level, if you shift all your schools to the better environment, you'll suddenly get a better result. This is I trust. Yeah, I can difficult to say, but I mean I trust that it will happen. If you go to a specific school, or two schools, or maybe three schools, it may not happen because there are those confounders that you cannot convoid. Yeah. So I believe we have to be very careful of not overgeneralizing this, because the results that the science presents to us are, on the population level or on average level, what we would expect on the larger group, not on a very small group. On a class level, so you say, if you invest in one class that improves ventilation, basically you know maybe there will be no shift, but if you do it in hundreds or thousands of classrooms, you will see that. That's the point.

Simon: 22:12

When you've been doing the work with sammy henry the, have you? Have you started to see some pictures form out of the data that you're getting from that study? That aligns with some of the work that corinne and pavel have been doing. I know certainly in your papers the thermal performance of those spaces has quite a big impact on people's perception of the spaces and certainly their interaction with ventilation in those spaces. So it seems time and time again thermal comfort keeps coming out as a critical element in the classroom the classroom.

Henry: 22:55

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think. I think we in the uk certainly suffer from that a lot because of our sort of um classroom architecture. Historically, um has always relied on natural ventilation and 95 of our classrooms still do so. We see, you know, we see, when the weather is temperate outside, most classrooms we're measuring in regularly or always adhere to government guidance, and once the outdoor temperature drops to around 5 degrees outdoors, we see 20% of them on average not adhering to the government guidance, 20% of them on average not adhering to the government guidance. And let's remember that in the UK we have some of the highest carbon dioxide thresholds within our guidance. So I think the short answer is yes. Short answer is is yes. We see, I don't mean the uk is no different to europe in terms of um.

Simon: 24:00

Some of the challenges it faces in its costumes? Definitely yeah, and it it's interesting. I think what's interesting about the indoor environmental piece, taking into account everything from thermal comfort to noise, is that this is a risk game and it's about tolerance of risk and balance of risk, and the example that was popping into my head when you were speaking just then was, yes, there may be increased CO2 in winter, but if the thermal impact on cognitive performance outweighs sitting in a classroom at 1500 parts per million, then maybe that's a balanced risk that somebody's prepared to take. That's the beauty of looking at it in the whole is that we can start to build a picture, I guess, of what's important when you know if you're, if you're looking at infection risk, the ventilation rate is going to be more critical, but it may be having an impact in winter in a naturally ventilated classroom on concentration and cognitive impact.

Simon: 24:58

I just had Jack Harvey Clark on the podcast talking about acoustics and it was fascinating. Sound is the second single largest environmental risk we face to our health, and their sound and acoustic discomfort and annoyance is an incredibly complex beast that I don't think many of us in the air quality community have any sense of at all. So I think classrooms present a really interesting picture of balancing risk and trying to understand what we're trying to protect against the harm and the benefits.

Pawel: 25:37

If I may, chip, I think you're absolutely right that maybe thermal outweigh the air quality. I just want to point out one important issue is we can see, we can hear and we can perceive that it's warm or cold. We don't know whether there is a lat, pm, pathogens and so on in the air. That we don't know, neither whether they are children or these are children or these are adults, and this is what you are saying. Actually, lejda, is that it's easy to get an action going, you know, for the aspects that we can perceive. So if the teacher knows that it's warm, okay, I mean I do something, but the teacher doesn't know whether there are pollutants. So air quality to me is really a challenge here and is very, very important in that sense. So I would call maybe thermal, acoustic and light as the acute sort of immediate and then air quality as delayed. So you may have a child that goes to a school with maybe hidden mold and then maybe in the fifth or sixth grade suddenly you know, picking up some problems, or maybe in the adulthood, we don't know. So I think this is a very important issue because they will pick up that and then it will be shown later in their life.

Pawel: 27:11

However, with the study that I mentioned, from Harvard I mean it's from US, it's a Harvard group that analyzed the data. It's actually they showed that the exit exams effects were affected not only by the immediate temperature at the time they took the test, but also in the preparatory time. So if someone was preparing for the exam in elevated temperatures, the risk of oh, the risk of success I mean of fail actually was very, very high. Yeah, so there's also a delayed effect on the thermal. And, of course, we know children, when they are in a very hot environment, you know they environment, you know they get, you know they lose the concentration and you know they are very difficult to control. We know that. Studies from Professor Wyon, studies from 70s in Sweden, also in, I think, in UK.

Simon: 28:09

There's an element of adaptability, though, with things like thermal comfort. You know. We know, for example, that when you that when you come out of the heating season, you'll have a higher tolerance for lower temperatures than you do going into the heating season, and vice versa with warmers. So we know, and certainly in different regions, students will be much more tolerable of 26, 27 degrees in a classroom compared to Northern Europe. So we know there's an element of that, but you can't build up an adaptability to formaldehyde exposure, for example. There's no level of that that you're going to adapt to. So indoor air quality is unique, but it's not all chronic, is it? I mean we also have to be mindful of infection risk and certainly through COVID, there's an acute impact of poor air quality. I know it's incredibly difficult. There's a whole other podcast needed to talk about that.

Corinne: 29:07

And we should not forget carbon monoxide yeah of course. So normally in schools there is no heating equipment anymore, no condition anymore. But who knows, In some countries there are still using some portable heater that may emit carbon monoxide.

Pawel: 29:25

And I want to chip in on this adaptability, I agree. So someone who is living in a warmer environment will be adapted to the higher temperatures, but they environment will be adapted to the higher temperatures, but they will be exposed also to the higher temperatures. Above this, their adaptability level.

Simon: 29:41

Yeah.

Pawel: 29:41

Because the environment will cause that there will be higher temperatures. So I think it's extrapolating to it's just the level. Yeah, the effects will be there, but a different level. So we should not believe that the fact that you go, I don't know, to the sub-Saharan or whatever environments, because people are adapted to 30 degrees, they will suddenly learn very good in school because they will be having in school 35 or 40 degrees that we will never have. Yeah, so that is the issue here.

Simon: 30:16

While I have you, I just want to borrow your attention for a minute to tell you about Errico, a partner of this podcast. In fact, I worked for Errico for over 12 years, so I can speak with some authority here. With over 40 years of expertise, eroco has undoubtedly established itself as a market leader in DCV technology, that's, demand controlled ventilation. Their mechanical extract systems dynamically adjust airflow rates based on real-time needs, and their NVHR systems further enhance energy savings by recovering heat while delivering fresh, filtered air, both creating comfortable and sustainable environments. Their advanced solutions are tailored for residential, commercial and educational settings, ensuring optimal indoor air quality and energy efficiency. As part of the ALDIS Group and based in Paris, france, eriko continues to innovate and set benchmarks for the industry. Their solutions seamlessly integrate into buildings, providing intelligent, efficient and reliable ventilation tailored to the unique demands of each space. With a global footprint, aeroco, as part of the Aldis Group, are a powerful partner in securing good indoor environments and are well worth checking out. Links are in the show notes at airqualitymattersnet and, of course, at Aeroco spelt A-E-R-E-C-Ocouk.

Simon: 31:59

Back to the show. And there are very real long-term chronic impacts here I mean. One of the things I noted from your work, henry, was the impact outdoor air quality had on indoor air quality, particularly in classrooms that are naturally ventilated. So just because we're out at the heating season and we're not building up levels of pollutants indoors doesn't mean we're not exposing kids to particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide and other traffic pollutants. You only I know you weren't necessarily monitoring some of those, but you definitely saw a lot of correlation, didn't you in sammy, with outdoor air quality to the what you were seeing in in classrooms yeah, so we we focused on PM2.5, and there averaging across the schools, comparing it to a national average of the reference grade monitors.

Henry: 32:56

Outside, we saw correlation coefficients of the order 80% it's very high and we were able to put a an upper bound on the amount of pm in classrooms that's coming from indoor sources, and that was at 25. So the vast majority of pm in in uk classrooms seems to be coming in, uh, from ambient air quality and that that that has and that has very significant implications, because either you have to argue that we have to clean up the outdoor air and alongside managing the indoor air quality better, or we actually have to really invest in building ventilation systems that actually help us segregate the air in our classrooms from the air outdoors, you know, namely including filtration and and in any case, I think we would always need to encourage heat recovery.

Simon: 33:57

But I mean yeah it's a massive, massive factor well that that's a beautiful segue onto. My next question really is that if, sitting here today, we get a sense that we can do better, which I think is the general consensus in classrooms you know, not all classrooms all of the studies show that we can do very well in certain situations, but there there certainly seems to be some road to cover to get to where we need to do from your work, henry and sammy. What does that? What's that telling us about possible pathways for us? If you're sitting on a stock, as you say, that's the majority of it is naturally ventilated, probably older in nature in some circumstances as well. What are the kind of things that the research is showing us the possibilities for? What's next?

Henry: 34:56

so I think, um, I, I, so I'm married to a teacher and and so I always really struggle to see the importance of air quality in schools in isolation of all the other challenges that they face. But I've sort of, over the recent few years, decided that actually we do need to, as the air quality community community, take recommendations to the table. They're not necessarily what we definitely think should happen, but they're saying if we want to improve air quality in classrooms, this is what we could consider doing, and then somebody else you know up to the level of ministers has to decide you know how they allocate spending, because everything that, everything that we recommend, has cost implications, but I think some of it I mean in the UK. I think one of our first things is to advocate for more ventilation provision in classrooms, and the trouble with doing that, naturally, is that there's massive energy costs associated with doing that. So it needs some real thoughts to whether the right thing is to bear that ongoing energy cost, which comes at a school level, of course, or to invest in, in building wide mechanical systems that the funding of which, you know, naturally, would have to come at a government level. And these, these are the sort of challenges that I see us facing.

Henry: 36:26

I think what we definitely have to do is keep routine monitoring of classrooms as a priority, and Pavel talked earlier about and I think quite rightly we can't guarantee what will happen when we improve air quality.

Henry: 36:42

We can guarantee that if things are done sensibly, there will there should be no negative consequences, and I think that's a really good starting point.

Henry: 36:51

But if we're monitoring things we already have, and I'm sure other nations do. We have the national pupil database. But if we, if we are encouraging or implementing better air quality in schools in a way that we can see it in monitored data, then we'll be able to compare these very large scale statistics against things like the National Pupil Database, national Health Records, and then we start to have the statistical power to be able to say what we can and cannot evidence as as being associated with changes in indoor air quality. And I think all we need is to get onto that footing of positive implement implementation with evidence of the impact, and then we'll be in a sort of reinforcement cycle and then it will be very easy to encourage governments to invest large-scale funding in improving classrooms. It shouldn't be a difficult thing to do, but we just have to have the evidence to encourage that funding and I suppose at that kind of scale, Corinne, you're bringing epidemiology into it as well.

Corinne: 37:59

We're starting to have the scale to really understand cohorts at a national level exactly, and pairing with l3corg is uh starting in many countries because now it's better and better recorded. So my first, uh, my the first need I identified was exactly what you say, henry the the need to monitor more routinely, because if you don don't monitor, we don't identify the problems. We need a thermometer to identify if it's going wrong.

Corinne: 38:31

And each classroom, each school is specific, so we need to. This is not because we did a survey in 300 schools that we know everything. So we need to develop this basic monitoring. But today we cannot each classroom cannot do the monitoring we did during our school survey because it was quite expensive. With active sampling, it means pump checking the flow rate. It cannot be generalized easily. So we need, as people involved in this field, help identifying a short list of indoor pollutants that can be measured, that can be measured easily, that can be measured in an affordable manner. For outdoor air quality, there is today a short list of outdoor air pollutants that are regulated. There is outdoor air quality index. We need to do the same for buildings, for classrooms Short list of pollutants with protocols to measure them. We need to help people choosing the best sensors. We need to raise awareness among stakeholders but also help them to set this monitoring. And then the second need that I have identified would be to help identifying the best solution Identifying low-cost school supplies.

Corinne: 39:44

School supplies emit volatile organic compounds. Furniture in classrooms there is a lot of furniture because a lot of pupils. This is a major source of volatile organic compounds in classrooms. Industrials must propose furniture that emit low organic compounds and we need labours to make it easy to choose the best, the products emitting the lowest VOCs Cleaning products. We have not discussed about cleaning products, but in classrooms it's different from dwellings, but in classrooms every day there is cleaning. We notice this in our surveys Every morning there is cleaning. We notice this in our surveys Every morning there is cleaning. So the cleaning products also have volatile organic compounds that are emitted in the air, that are exposing the children, and in our studies we identify that there are some hazardous chemicals in these cleaning products.

Corinne: 40:38

So we need to develop. Industrials need also to develop products without these harmful chemicals and we need to help the school managers to identify these good products good materials, good cleaning products, good supplies and helping them with the mechanical ventilation system, because it's rather complex and each school is a case-by-case approach. We don't need many supply and exhaust ventilation everywhere in every school, so we need really to help the people. I think we need raising awareness and then helping them in monitoring and identifying the solutions.

Simon: 41:21

And what I love about all of this is this risk lens that you can look through stuff and we've got some very well-established mechanisms for managing risk in our built environment. I mean what you've been speaking to. There is, fundamentally, hierarchies of control from a risk perspective, the elimination and substitution of risks out of the environment. So we don't have to invent engineering controls. You, you know, if you don't bring a chemical into a classroom, I don't have to deal with it with an engineering control. So that we've got structures in place to manage complex environments very well. This is a very well understood practice in occupational hygiene and health and safety that you know there's professionals and expertise and structures and processes all there to support us. Um, and I think something that both of you have touched on there that's really interesting is is that in some way, this has to be translated in a way that's actionable and provides agency to the actors in those spaces.

Corinne: 42:25

Actionable, affordable.

Simon: 42:26

Yeah, for sure.

Corinne: 42:28

Reliable because we could speak about the air cleaners also, that there are so many on the market. People can easily choose the one to be used in classrooms.

Simon: 42:37

Yeah, it's really interesting and I think that's something that Sammy was spending a lot of time on.

Simon: 42:47

There's a strong element of citizen science in Sammy as well, which I think is a really important part, and obviously I've had Sarah and others talking about the citizen science piece on the podcast.

Simon: 43:00

We've we've got to get better at involving the stakeholders in in these conversations, because the reality is is that we are not going to be able to fix all spaces all at once, everything everywhere all at once, whatever the film is called um. So we have to prioritize, we have to provide the tools for people to be able to say, okay, this is how I'm going to manage the risk in that space, and I have agency in doing that, because this classroom is not going to practically get an MVHR system in the next 10 years. How do I do the best that I can with this space until then? And that's where I think tools like TAIL and combining it with monitoring, which was very heavy with SAMI, starts to provide those signposts for people to say, well, I may have to control this environment myself until something is automated. I may have to control this environment myself until something is automated.

Corinne: 44:04

We are lucky because low-cost sensors are developing more and more and will be more and more reliable in the future, so this is a new tool that was not existing 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

Simon: 44:15

They are very promising.

Corinne: 44:16

They are not as accurate as a standardized method, but they give an information.

Pawel: 44:22

Well, I personally think that it's true. However, we have an and we have to think about this problem as a rather complicated, in the sense that we should be thinking for the new schools. So all those measures that were proposed here are actually good for the new schools. So, whenever you now do the new school design, think all of this. Maybe put the school some other place, far away from the noisy street, far away for the sources, have plans around this, you know, have areas, think differently.

Pawel: 45:02

Of course, it will be very difficult in the city of London to build one, but probably the city of London has enough schools, and this is another problem. What we do with the schools that exist today. I mean to introduce the solutions, for the cleaning can be introduced. Maybe you can exchange all the furniture, but the renovation is also a complicated problem, and then all those schools anyway will have probably at least in Denmark, by 2030 or maybe by 2035, all the public buildings will have to go through the retrofit program for the energy, program for the energy. This is where I see the huge opportunity, where we really need to talk with the people, the decarbonization people and all that. Sometimes they don't want to listen to us. Anyway, talk to them and show them the way and then. So this is one aspect that I want to bring in, and so we have to separate this. Secondly, even if we had money today let's assume we have enough energy, we have money and so on we cannot convert all the schools in one year to the mechanical school because we don't have people who can install that. This is a long process. I mean, how many schools are there in the UK? But I mean you think you know and how long it would take to install the system and you know how many teams there would be. Probably it's a long process and also you cannot disturb the school. The school has to operate.

Pawel: 46:38

So we have to start thinking a little bit outside the box and figure out some intermediate levels, and I think because we want to have a final solution, but maybe this final solution is very difficult to implement. So we always hit, you know, the glass ceiling, you call it, or the wall. We cannot do it because there is no decree or there is ministry that doesn't like it or something like that. So if we just step back and say, okay, but we don't have to be perfect from the very beginning, let's start with the small steps. Maybe this is a solution to that, but we still need to have, you know, the sort of a green light from the top.

Pawel: 47:22

So we'll say that you know a minister, a prime minister, coming out and saying, well, we have to do something about the schools, right, and then that will be a message to the agencies to develop some sort of documents that you could follow, and then it will certainly the markets. Today they will bring some solutions. Coming back to the citizen science, because I really think that the solution to that maybe is there. Even benchmarking the school would be difficult. So how we can send sensors to thousands of schools or thousands of classrooms, who is going to check them? Who is going to monitor this, checking whether they are working, sending them back? I mean, I think it's a logistic problem.

Corinne: 48:10

It's organized for outdoor air quality, so it must be feasible to.

Pawel: 48:14

But outdoor air quality is not that much because, let's say, in each building school building there will be I think it is possible, I just want to come back to this In each building you'll have maybe 10, 15, 20, maybe, classrooms, and then we have one janitor who has to take care of this. So I don't know whether he's already busy or she or whatever, so I don't know how to deal with that. Then we think that maybe the solution will be citizen science and actually have a new subject in teach, taught in schools, indoor environment and maybe generally environment, but probably they are taught about environment already in which the part of this subject will be to monitor my classroom or to monitor my school. So the schools will go to the specific agencies that will provide them with calibrated, good tools that they will know Simple, still simple. Children will get it, will measure and then, together with the agency, they will interpret it and then take it as a part of their education to also build up the new generation who will think about the environment for the future.

Pawel: 49:33

And then you don't have to monitor continuously. Even in TAIL we don't continuously monitor, but we want to make a fairly good monitoring. They can come back again and then they can do the monitoring again and then after some time. So making it as a part of the education program in which they will learn something and we can learn, because if we have it they will benchmark those schools for us and we will know this school requires that this is the biggest problem, or this is the biggest problem in that school, but that school requires something else. So I think that is manageable, but we have to come up with these intermediate levels. Next, probably the school will not have sufficient funding. All the local community will not have funding for mechanical ventilation. So what would be the intermediate solution for them?

Simon: 50:28

And this is often where this event today that we're broadcasting the podcast from is a Euro event, um event and, in conjunction with sibsy and and abisa and these are industry organizations and industry is very good at finding the value stack in these problems and finding ways to present it and and shape it in a way that it makes sense for organizations to do it. We've seen that with indoor environmental monitoring and social housing has really taken off because they've presented a value proposition to that sector that pays for that technology to go in and presents solutions to a range of stakeholders within that vertical and I've had this conversation about schools and sensors before we tend to think of things in silos, but actually when you think of who the stakeholders are for that information that a censor provides, you've got the citizen science and the education as you've been talking about for kids. It's smack bang in the middle of STEM and everything we're trying to achieve there. In fact, the BT Young Scientist Awards that were held in Dublin, which are a national treasury in Ireland where thousands of students contribute towards science, three of the winners this year were looking at air quality, rail on mould and developing apps to help teachers, all completely off their own back from different parts of Ireland. So without question it's smack bang in the middle of what we want kids to be learning. It has everything, doesn't it? Engineering, chemistry, social science, everything.

Simon: 52:11

But for the janitor, the data that I've seen from schools and you've probably seen it, if you look at it through this lens, you'll find classrooms that are still at design temperature at three o'clock in the morning in the heating season Because the way the thermostats have been set up and the timers have been set up in that building it was because a teacher complained once that they were cold when they were still at school at seven o'clock in the evening doing marking. And now all of a sudden you're looking at design temperatures at three o'clock in the morning. Go well, there's 20, 30, 40 energy savings to be had. I, as an engineer or a janitor, I can now see this building in a way that I've never been able to see it before, because I've got some rusty old boiler with a central thermostat somewhere. Now I can start making decisions about optimizing the building and saving money. That saves enough money to pay for the sensors to go in in the first place.

Simon: 53:08

You've got heads of years that are trying to manage administrative controls from a risk perspective. Which teachers are managing air quality better, which aren't? How do I manage the people and get better results out of my sector? And as a principal and a board of management, you've got assets and the deterioration of assets and the value of assets over time that all of this data feeds into and you start piling that value stack together and all of a sudden, putting in 20 or 30 cents into a school looks like an absolute no-brainer and may pay for itself and give us all the advantages that we're looking for from a managing air quality and cognitive performance perspective. So I think industry has a really interesting part to play in this sometimes, in that it finds ways because it has to sell this stuff. Ultimately, it's got to stand there in front of the board of management and go. I want you to spend 15 000 euros on co2 monitors for your classroom, and so they have to find a way of presenting that in an interesting way.

Henry: 54:14

So just just to sort of? Um, I want to pick that up in a second. So the SAMI project has tried to do a few of the things you were alluding to, pavel, in terms of sending monitors to schools and then encouraging them to use them through a web app and getting them to play games and carry out scientific analysis with them. And, yeah, you're right, it's not without its challenges, but I think it is a viable route and I think it kind of ties to my overall feeling about the question is that we're not really talking about the steps. I think we're really talking about the fact that we need this massive multi-pronged route into solving this. This, and you're right, industry is one of them. I think you know we have to recognize that new schools and existing schools are completely different challenges and we need to tackle those through different routes.

Henry: 55:15

Um, you know the the. There are lovely aspects of citizen science. It's incredibly powerful tool. It actually makes doing rigorous science sometimes difficult, in the sense that you know you are making you know confounders worse by the fact that you're educating them. So you're not. You know how? Do you know that the fact that they know more about air quality means they haven't improved at home and it's not the improvement in school that's making the effects of the improvement. No, the truth is we have to sort of um, you know, step back from our, our, our love of science at some point and say, does it matter, you know where? That we can't prove where it came from. All we know is that things are better than they were, and I think that's the the key thing. And I think, yeah, there's so many routes and we have to. We have to do a lot through um government. I think we have to do a lot, uh, through industry and we have a lot to do through the people sitting in and using classrooms, definitely.

Pawel: 56:21

Yeah, here the major thing is actually education, and we will not be deprived by AI from that part, unfortunately, I think. But I think it's an education at the level for the teachers, for the young generation, that will bring it up on, maybe on their parents and then for the future also. They will start to think what they buy, like with the food, with water, with their fitness. They suddenly start to think about what my environment here how is it, is it good or not? Environment here, how is it, is it good or not? And also education to the staff, because there is a development, huge development, of the solutions that janitors or the facility managers from the local school, one place or another, they may not know about. So there is a potential there to do that actually. And also you are saying, probably the pieces of solutions are already there, and this is what you are saying actually, is that each of us are pulling the strings to ourselves.

Pawel: 57:32

No, no, we have a solution. No, no, no. It should be done by sensors. No, no, no. It should be done by this. It should be done by mechanical vendors no, all of them. They should be deployed and treated on par. Then we will have a success.

Pawel: 57:47

Yes, yes, and so, rather than saying that I am smarter than you are, it's just like let's try all of that and then it will bring the value here. And I agree with you, there's a lot of research to be done and from time to time, the scientists should also step back and say well, I mean, what is the value proposition for the society that we have by doing all this research? So this is exactly what we do. Is we just step back and try to think for the pragmatic?

Simon: 58:18

Yeah, and recognize that every school has its own battles to fight and this will just be another work stream that has to be undertaken amongst everything else and like a lot like we've seen this, particularly with the sustainability journey. Success and traction comes when you understand how to fit in with those work streams. We've just we've spoken here about the opportunity that refurbishment and retrofit has. A lot of these buildings are going to have to have major alterations to them anyway. You slide in with that in an intelligent way and there are cost optimizations to be had. Schools need to be maintained and managed and windows replaced and things fixed day to day and year to year. Fixed day to day and year to year. It's it building in the knowledge and awareness into the existing work streams so that we can get every leverage that we can and every opportunity that we can.

Simon: 59:10

And I think new builds is a really interesting one because it's a bit like sustainability in new builds. There's no excuse with the new school, like we should be able to design a school for optimal indoor environmental quality. If schools are going up today that aren't providing that, there's something wrong with the design level. Yeah, frankly, like there's no, there's no excuse for decent thermal comfort, air quality and lighting and sound in a modern classroom yeah, yeah.

Simon: 59:40

I think maybe where, as you pointed out, where the awareness is might be a material selection and things like that, there's still some construction materials and things like that to learn. But from an engineering perspective, geez, we should be getting schools right at this stage.

Pawel: 59:54

We can build fully rich companies. They can build offices where people want to stay.

Simon: 1:00:01

Yeah, they have fitness rooms.

Pawel: 1:00:02

Rich companies. They can build offices where people want to stay. They have fitness rooms, they have places where they can sit on couches and relax. Plenty of I don't know other features. So we know how to build it. People like it. So I mean, it's just the way to translate this into the oh, just put it into the school environment.

Corinne: 1:00:23

It's not money, unfortunately, because we still have money, but schools belong to the municipalities at least.

Simon: 1:00:31

This is the biggest problem of all of them and often the schools, even new schools, fit within a very strict design criteria. There is a national design policy for certain things how far a football field needs to be from a classroom, because they don't want grass treading in where the hard hard areas are, where the shelter? There's a lot, there's a lot at a national level that can be done. So I mean it if you're in a position of power, corinne, and pulling the levers here, prime Minister. Prime Minister, corinne Landin In 2025.

Pawel: 1:01:09

Yeah, yeah, maybe you should be going.

Simon: 1:01:14

What would you do? What would be a good step in 2025, do you think, in this space, if we could see one thing happening in education with all that we've been talking about today, what would it be from your perspective?

Corinne: 1:01:29

My wish for 2025 would be that all stakeholders are convinced and involved, because we discussed a lot about raising awareness and involvement of all raising awareness and involvement of all. What I observe in France is that many people managing schools either don't know, so we need to let them know that it's important. Children are a vulnerable population. We have specific pollution in classrooms. We know there is an effect on health and performance, so we need to let them know. We need to convince them, because many are not convinced.

Corinne: 1:02:01

When the French regulation was set a few years ago, in classrooms monitoring indoor air quality, one big municipality, meijer, said OK, we don't need this, we just use your nose to measure indoor air pollution. So it was a big misunderstanding, and so people need to be convinced and sometimes quantifying the benefits, showing that this is consistent with other approach thermal retrofit and sustainability it helps stakeholders to be convinced and help them to find affordable solution, because sometimes people know, people are convinced, but people cannot afford, so we need also to help them. So if everybody is convinced, I think we can do many things, but if it's not important or perceived as important, nothing will be done.

Simon: 1:02:55

That's a really important point and I think one of the big challenges of something like air quality and I was only having this discussion last week around social housing the reality is is that indoor air quality is a luxury to be able to think about if you're trying to put food on the table or heat your home, and for many schools, the priority might be we don't have enough teachers or we've got a pay dispute going on, or you know that that building's for you know. So the challenge here is ratcheting it up high enough up the priority that it means something to people that this is important to spend some time.

Henry: 1:03:32

Yeah, I mean, I mean. Yeah, I mean essentially. I completely agree with Corrine and I think the way I would phrase it, rather than ratcheting up the priorities, I think it's about making sure it's raised in people's awareness and then they can prioritize for themselves. We can't tell them that indoor air quality is more important than you know, something that's earning you money and is, you know, degrading your air quality.

Henry: 1:04:01

We that's, that's has to be their choice, but we can, we have to. I think if I was going to do, you know, just one thing, it would be raise air quality, more specifically indoor air quality, up the public consciousness so that people understood it and could start to make judgments for themselves. And I think that would pervade, you know, right, from our stakeholders who use classrooms right up to ministers who have the budgets to sign off. And I think, if, if we manage to, to bring up that consciousness, I think very different decisions would be made than the ones that have been made in the past.

Simon: 1:04:45

And what more motivated a group of people than parents of children to understand the importance of this subject. Yeah right, so you've got an important sector. We know children are the most vulnerable when they're young to air quality and so on, but we've got a stakeholder group that supervises and manages them that are really bought into this naturally, which I think you know is something we could be leveraging more.

Henry: 1:05:16

Yeah, we have to not only highlight the risks but also emphasize the benefits. It's not just about your child might be less sick. It's also about they could come home from school happier and they're likely to come home with better grades. And that's what's going to motivate the parents as much as it would motivate the teachers.

Simon: 1:05:38

And I meant to say this earlier and I'll come on to you, pav, in just a second, but it's an old trope of air quantity and that is that all you have to do is be in the space and breathe to get the benefits. So much of what we're trying to attain when it comes to things like academic performance requires buy-in at a very high level by students and teachers and so on. Think of the effort the teachers go in in training and and all sorts of things, an environment to try and eke out another few percentage in performances, in test scores and so on, and they have to put an enormous amount of effort in every year to to do that. You fix air quality once and everybody just has to be in the space passively reaping the benefits. This is the advantage of air quality once and everybody just has to be in the space passively reaping the benefits. This is the advantage of air quality I think Just very quickly on that.

Henry: 1:06:26

I mean, I don't know how much education do we provide when we're training teachers. Do we teach them about the indoor environment, classroom environment? Well certainly not air quality in the UK. I don't know about, you know about in Europe, and I think that that's just a key thing that needs to change.

Pawel: 1:06:45

Yeah.

Henry: 1:06:46

What about you, Pavel?

Pawel: 1:06:48

I completely agree with that. I want to come back to what you said in the beginning, that the school is a very, very special environment. It's just an amazing environment where you can do a lot. Maybe use this later in other buildings or in other projects and so on. But actually this environment requires people from across the board, from different disciplines. So you need to have a department of education, you need to have a department of health, you need to have a department of energy, you need to have a department of building. They need to sit down and really think how to solve that issue. So it's not like the school has to, you know, save money because they need to employ new teachers and then suddenly the ventilation is poor.

Pawel: 1:07:37

I don't think this is the way. So really, what Karin was saying is it really requires that there is a willingness at the level of people who take decisions to sit down and talk problems. Then also for the things that might be, for the scientists, young scientists I think we have seen that schools are bad. We don't need more research on this and more measurements. We need solutions. So I think that will sell much better.

Pawel: 1:08:12

So we don't? I mean, everyone can document now with a sensor that the school is performing poorly, but how to solve this? I think that is the question that we should solve, and that is one important joker in all of this, I believe, is a mental health, and a mental health that is really, you know, it's like a new epidemics, a pandemic, so to say, among especially young generation, and we really need to have more research to document what is the role. It's not that it will cause the mental problems poor environment but how it modifies the conditions for the people with mental problems, and I think this is really that would be a very strong argument, and I think we really need to go into that and then understand that this is something, is a piece of the puzzle that we don't know at the moment.

Pawel: 1:09:14

So that is, this is probably 2025. But only until June, and then after June I will have something else, but only until June, and then after June I will have something else. Laughter, laughter laughter.

Simon: 1:09:25

Well, guys, the conference is going to start shortly, so I think we'll wrap up there to let you prepare for that. Pavel Corinne, henry, thanks a million for your time. Thanks for having us. It was very enjoyable cheers. Thanks a million for your time.

Simon: 1:09:40

Thanks for having us. It was very enjoyable Cheers. Thanks for listening. Before you go, can I ask a favour? 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.