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Have you ever wondered how to make complex air quality systems understandable for everyone, especially those most vulnerable? Join me as I reflect on two major milestones: 20 rewarding years in Ireland and a first year of my consultancy.

This episode is a personal journey through the pillars of my work—consultancy, communication, and diverse projects like teaching and course development. Plus, I share some updates about the podcast's successful effort over the past six months to bring essential conversations about air quality and the built environment to a wider audience. And some exciting news on some partnerships for the next 6.

Communicating technical information to homeowners who may not fully grasp the systems being installed can be quite a challenge.

That’s why we’re tackling the topic of vulnerability in ventilation communication head-on. This episode shines a spotlight on the ethical responsibility of companies to make their systems user-friendly and accessible. We'll discuss the necessity of clear communication, comprehensive support, and continual feedback to ensure everyone's air quality improves, regardless of their background.

We turn to the Healthy Buildings Barometer 2024 , which offers critical insights into European homes and their impact on residents' health—and loads more besides.

https://www.airqualitymatters.net/

https://www.bpie.eu/publication/healthy-buildings-barometer-2024-how-to-deliver-healthy-sustainable-and-resilient-buildings-for-people/

https://aivc2024conference.org/

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A converation with Charles Weschler

After completing his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago, Dr. Weschler did postdoctoral studies with Prof. Fred Basolo at Northwestern University.

In 1975 he joined Bell Laboratories as a research scientist in the Physical Chemistry Division. He conducted research at Bell Labs and its successor institutions until 2001 being named a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff (1986).

In 2001 he retired from Bellcore/Telcordia and accepted positions at the Environmental & Occupational Health Science Institute, Rutgers University, and the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Technical University of Denmark. He has continued in those positions through the present. In 2010 he joined the faculty of the Building Science department at Tsinghua University (Beijing) as an ongoing Visiting Professor.

He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Rutgers School of Public Health.

He was a Member of the Committee on Air Quality in Passenger Cabins in Commercial Aircraft, National Academy of Sciences, 2000-2001;

Advisor on Strategies to Protect the Health of Deployed US Forces, National Academy of Sciences, 1998-2000;

Member of the Committee to Review the Structure and Performance of the Health Effects Institute, National Academy of Sciences, 1991-1993;

And Member of the Committee on Advances in Assessing Human Exposure to Airborne Pollutants, National Academy of Sciences, 1987-1990.

From 1999-2005 he served on the US EPA’s Science Advisory Board, and from 2012-2023 was an advisor for the Sloan Foundation’s Chemistry of Indoor Environments program.

He was elected to the International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences in 1999 and received the Pettenkofer Award, its highest honor, in 2014.

He has been conferred the 2017 Haagen-Smit Prize from Atmospheric Environment; “Distinguished Visiting Professor” at Tsinghua University (2018); “Doctor Technices Honoris Causa” from the Technical University of Denmark (2018); and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2020, AAAS).

We spoke about Ozone, it impacts on human health and the air chemistry in our indoor environments.

And needless to say, if you go looking for information and papers on Ozone Charles Weschler if not an author will be cited somewhere.

So it was a pleasure and honour to talk to Charles, who is an absolute gentleman and so generous with his time.

Ozone is fascinating, never far from controversy and quite a naughty little pollutant by all accounts. It plays a fascinating role in our indoor environments.

This is a really insightful episode and full of information, so strap in, get ready to Google some chemistry names, and enjoy.

Charles Weschler - Linkedin

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You have me this week.

Sitting at home on a beautiful day with the window open, I wonder....

Could remote working and hybrid working, represent the single largest chronic occupational environmental health risk of this century?

While we've been enjoying the flexibility and comfort of working from home, a new, insidious risk is potentially emerging – one that could have profound implications for our long-term health and well-being. This risk is the deteriorating quality of our indoor environment at home

Imagine this: you're working at your home desk, basking in the convenience of avoiding the daily commute, only to discover that your home environment may be quietly undermining your health and productivity. The potential health risks associated with prolonged remote working conditions might represent the single largest chronic environmental health risk of our century.

The surge in remote and hybrid work, catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, has persisted well into 2024, with nearly 49% of desk workers now splitting their time between home and office, and 17% working fully remote. This could translate to around 900 million people globally who are exposed to home environments that were never designed for full-time work.

Harvard Paper
Ventilation and indoor air quality in new homes
Ventilation provision and use in homes in Great Britain: A national survey

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Achim Haug and Anika Krause

Achim is an ex senior Seimans exec of some two decades with a masters in science who now lives in Thialand and founded Air Gradient, an air quality monitor with a unique approach in the sector.

That started as a volunteer project to help a school in Northern Thailand monitor the air quality in classrooms during the highly polluted “burning season”.

From the beginning he put a strong focus on open designs, robust and long-lasting hardware and a strong desire to support people from all around the world with affordable and effective air quality solutions.

Anika is Air Gradients scientific advisor and lives in Italy. With a Masters in science and a PhD in philosophy and atmospheric sciences from Cambridge, an expert in air pollution exposure science and data analysis. She has spent several years in research and industry Before joining Air Grandient last year.

AirGradient is currently the only global air quality monitoring company that makes all its hardware design available for free under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. This means that all electronic schematics, firmware code, CAD files are openly available and allow (and encourage) other organizations to use them. They openly publish all their research and algorithms so that others can benefit from the extensive work they are doing.

Its a fascinating approach that cuts against the mainstream and opens up all sorts of potential, risk, challenges and benefits.

At a time when the air quality community and particularly the low cost sensor sector is figuring out the what next, Air Grandient is forging a unique path. And one I was fascinated to discuss.

Achim Haug - Linkedin
Anika Krause - Linkedin
AirGradient

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A conversation with Chris Rush

Chris is a Director and air quality consultant lead at Hoare Lea, an award-winning, multi-discipline engineering consultancy with a creative team of engineers, designers, and technical specialists.


Part of the Tetra Tech Group, a global provider of environmentally focused consulting and engineering services, and part of its renowned Tetra Tech High-Performance Buildings Group.


Chris is focused on promoting air quality's crucial health and well-being role in our built environment and the opportunity that buildings play as part of this.

Through his involvement as chair of the professional body for air quality in the UK – the Institute of Air Quality Management (IAQM), vice chair of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) Air Quality Working Group and council member of the Institution of Environmental Sciences (IES) he aims to improve and is passionate about harnessing the value of air quality through the design and operation of buildings.

He is a Chartered Environmentalist, a Member of the Institute of Acoustics, a Full Member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, a Member of the IES as well as Full Member of the IAQM.

Chris is a thought leader in this field, and the impact he and large consultancy practices play in moving the needle, not just with customers but internally in the cross pollination of ideas and idials, is enormous.

He is at the vanguard of air quality in the built environment not just through Hoare lea but also in the development and growth of the IAQM.

Chris Rush - LinkedIn
Hoare Lea
Tetra Tech
Institute of Air Quality Management
Institute of Environmental Science

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A conversation with Mazen Jamal

With two decades of experience in the built environment, Mazen's journey in sales has led him from the Middle East to Sweden, where he started working in early prop-tech companies specializing in space utilization, occupancy detection, Indoor Air Quality monitoring, and smart/healthy building analytics.


Since he has conducted business across North America, and Continental Europe, all the way to India, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan.

I always think it's interesting talking to people involved in business development, account management and sales it is at the bleeding commercial edge of the sector.

It's close to my heart, but professionals like Mazen are also having conversations daily with the people who count, the customers, in whatever form they take, from C-suite executives to space users.

So it was a real pleasure to talk to Mazen, someone driven to grow the digital smart built environment. And someone who has worked at the coal face in sensor tech, smart buildings and healthy buildings.

Mazen is a straight shooter, and full of insight. Well respected and worth a listen to, in my opinion.

Mazen Jamal - LinkedIn

Support the Show.

Check out the Air Quality Matters website for more information, updates and more.

This Podcast is brought to you in partnership with.

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All great companies that share the podcast's passion for better air quality in the built environment. Supporting them helps support the show.

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Tom Robins - CEO - Switchee

Founded in 2015 by Adam Fudakowski (CEO) and Ian Napier (CCO), they believed that internet-connected technology could be applied to help social landlords better manage their stock and reduce residents' fuel bills. The solution: a smart thermostat designed specifically for landlords with a dashboard providing real-time data and insights, including some of the environmental conditions within the home.

Following Ian’s death in tragic circumstances in 2019, Adam and the team resolved to continue growing the business in his memory.

In 2020 Tom came into the business and a year later promoted to CEO. Under his stewardship, the business has continued to grow.

Tom has spent his career in scale-up leadership roles; Manufacturing Consulting with Newton, Financial Services Analytics with BIPB, A Board Decision Platform with Board Intelligence and Telecommunications with Community Fibre.

He has been working with the Housing Sector since 2015 and believes in
the power of technology to improve the quality of life for residents while transforming the operating model for providers.

Tom is a real people-focused leader with a track record in building and motivating teams. He also has a technical background, with a master's in chemical engineering from the University of Cambridge.

I have followed Switchee’s journey from its early days and have been fascinated by the passion of the people in it and its mission-led approach to data from the built environment. I was intrigued to chat with Tom about Switchee’s lived experience of translating data in a meaningful way, that they genuinely try to answer important questions in the sector and how that potential can be unlocked.

As more and more of the spaces we occupy provide meaningful data about the environment around us, the lessons companies like Switcee are learning could be valuable insight for others.

Moreover, Tom can paint a picture of what scale-up in this space looks like and the potential it holds.

Tom Robins - Linkedin
Switchee

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This Podcast is brought to you in partnership with.

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All great companies that share the podcast's passion for better air quality in the built environment. Supporting them helps support the show.

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Dr. Richard Corsi

Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Davis. His team has researched indoor source dynamics, indoor chemistry, and innovative and accessible control technologies for reducing exposure to indoor air pollutants.

During his 24 years as a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. He was an endowed research chair and member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, and served as Director of a National Science Foundation program on Indoor Environmental Science and Engineering that spawned many successful scholars of indoor air science.

Richard's work has been cited in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Forbes, National Geographic …….

He is a past President of the Academy of Fellows of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ) and past President of the society’s signature conference Indoor Air 2011 in Austin, Texas.

He recently chaired a National Academies committee report on Health Risks of Indoor Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter and Practical Mitigation Solutions. A truly multidisciplinary endevour that has produced a state of the science report that is truly phenomenal. And I think is going to be the go to reference for some time.

I was really keen to talk to Richard about this report, as his overview of the work is a must listen for anybody working in the built environment, and his ability to bring to life a 270 odd page report in plain english is truly a skill.

I was also keen to talk to one of the people behind the Corsi Rosenthal box, the DIY air cleaner that burst into prominence during the pandemic and turned the sector on its head in many ways.

Ive been looking forward to bringing this conversation to you, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Richard Corsi LinkedIn
Richard Corsi UC Davies
National Academies Report
Corsi-Rosenthal Foundation

Support the Show.

Check out the Air Quality Matters website for more information, updates and more.

This Podcast is brought to you in partnership with.

21 Degrees
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All great companies that share the podcast's passion for better air quality in the built environment. Supporting them helps support the show.