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Air Quality Matters

Air Quality Matters

Written by: Simon Jones
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Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out.

This Podcast is about Indoor Air Quality, Outdoor Air Quality, Ventilation, and Health in our homes, workplaces, and education settings.

And we already have many of the tools we need to make a difference.

The conversations we have and how we share this knowledge is the key to our success.

We speak with the leaders at the heart of this sector about them and their work, innovation and where this is all going.

Air quality is the single most significant environmental risk we face to our health and wellbeing, and its impacts on us, our friends, our families, and society are profound.

From housing to the workplace, education to healthcare, the quality of the air we breathe matters.

Air Quality Matters


© 2025 Air Quality Matters Nature & Ecology Science
Episodes
  • OT31: Fighting Fire With Fire - The Hidden Health Cost of Preventing Wildfires

    OT31: Fighting Fire With Fire - The Hidden Health Cost of Preventing Wildfires
    Dec 18 2025
    Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and One Take, where we unpack the latest research shaping our understanding of indoor air and the built environment. This week, we're diving into one of the most complex and urgent environmental dilemmas of our time: the smoke from fires we set on purpose. The paper, Associations between PM2.5 from Prescribed Burning and Emergency Department Visits in 11 Southeastern US States by a team of researchers from Boston University, Georgia Tech, and other institutions, tackles a critical question: In our effort to prevent catastrophic wildfires through prescribed burning, are we creating a different, more chronic health problem from the smoke of these "good fires"? The Environmental Dilemma: Prescribed burning—intentionally setting smaller, controlled fires to clear underbrush—is one of our primary tools to fight the catastrophic wildfires made worse by climate change. But this tool has side effects: smoke containing fine particulate matter (PM2.5). The question is whether we're trading one health disaster for another. The Study: Researchers analyzed over 30 million emergency department visits from 11 southeastern US states over nearly a decade—a region where prescribed burning is common practice. Using sophisticated chemical transport models, they "tagged" PM2.5 in the air to identify which portions came specifically from prescribed fires, allowing them to isolate the health signal of just these controlled burns. The Surprising Findings: Yes, there is a link. On days with high levels of PM2.5 from prescribed fires, there was a statistically significant increase in emergency department visits for upper respiratory infections and, most notably, ischemic heart disease, which went up by about 6%. But here's the counter-intuitive part: For the classic signatures of smoke exposure—overall respiratory admissions, asthma, and COPD—they didn't find a statistically significant increase. This is what makes smoke from prescribed fires different from wildfire smoke. Why the Difference? The nature of the fires themselves. Wildfires are hot, intense, and chaotic, burning everything from the forest floor to the canopy. Prescribed burns are cooler and slower, designed to smolder through underbrush, grass, and leaf litter. This difference in what's burning and how it's burning creates a different chemical cocktail of smoke. Prescribed fire smoke tends to have lower concentrations of pollutants like carbon monoxide and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) compared to wildfire smoke. The Big Takeaway: Not all smoke is created equal. The health impact of PM2.5 is not just about the mass of particles in the air—it's about what those particles are made of, and it depends profoundly on the source. This research doesn't give us an easy answer. It doesn't say prescribed burning is safe or unsafe. Instead, it gives us a much more nuanced picture. It's a powerful reminder that there are no easy wins in environmental management—it's all a game of trade-offs. We're using a tool to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, but that tool has its own health risks, and those risks are different. This kind of research is absolutely vital for land managers and public health officials because it helps them understand the specific health impacts of their decisions, allowing for more targeted warnings and a better, more honest conversation about the risks we're actually choosing to manage. Associations between PM2.5 from prescribed burning and emergency department visits in 11 Southeastern US states https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2025.109770 The One Take Podcast in Partnership with SafeTraces and Inbiot Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Prescribed Burning Paradox 00:01:48 The Study Design: Tagging Smoke from Good Fires 00:02:54 The Findings: A Surprising Health Signal 00:04:02 Not All Smoke is Equal: The Chemistry Matters 00:05:32 The Big Takeaway: Environmental Trade-Offs and Honest Conversations 00:06:40 Closing: Thanks and Next Week
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    7 mins
  • From Thermal Comfort to Heat Stress: Buildings That Don't Overheat with Paul O'Sullivan - #102

    From Thermal Comfort to Heat Stress: Buildings That Don't Overheat with Paul O'Sullivan - #102
    Dec 15 2025
    In this essential episode, we sit down with Paul O'Sullivan, lecturer in Sustainable Energy Engineering at MTU and co-lead of the MESO Research Group, to explore one of the most pressing—yet often overlooked—challenges in our built environment: how do we design buildings that don't overheat? Paul brings deep expertise in low-energy demand-side technologies, building retrofit strategies, indoor thermal environments, and ventilative cooling. His work sits at the fascinating intersection of thermal comfort, air quality, decarbonization, and the future resilience of our homes, schools, and workplaces. The Central Question We've spent decades designing buildings to be thermally comfortable in winter—airtight, well-insulated, energy-efficient. But in doing so, have we created a new problem? As our climate warms and our buildings become better at keeping heat in, how do we ensure they can also let heat out when they need to—without resorting to energy-intensive air conditioning? Key Topics Discussed: Thermal Comfort vs. Overheating: What's the difference between discomfort and a genuine health risk? Why overheating is not just about temperature, but about duration, vulnerability, and the capacity of a building to respond. The Unintended Consequences of Energy Efficiency: How our drive to decarbonize heating has created buildings that struggle to cool—and why Ireland's cooling season now starts in March. The Cooling Ladder: A design philosophy for tackling overheating—starting with prevention (solar shading, orientation), then modulation (thermal mass, phase-change materials), then dissipation (ventilative cooling), and only finally, supplementary mechanical cooling. Ventilative Cooling and the New CEN Technical Specification: How natural and mechanical ventilation can provide free, sustainable cooling—and why the European standard Paul helped develop is a game-changer for designers. The Performance Gap: Why buildings that look great on paper often overheat in reality—and why simulation tools are struggling to keep pace with the rate of climate change and building innovation. Agency and Adaptation: The power of openable windows, external shutters, and giving occupants control. Why buildings that allow people to adapt perform better—and why we've lost some of that agency in modern construction. This is a conversation about trade-offs, resilience, and the path forward. It's about recognizing that comfort isn't a luxury—it's a fundamental aspect of health, well-being, and productivity. And it's about designing buildings that work with their climate, not against it. DESCRIPTION: HOST: Simon Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-air-quality-matters/ GUEST: Paul O’Sullivan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-d-o-sullivan-441b9023/ The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with Zehnder Group - Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect - The One Take Podcast in Partnership with SafeTraces and Inbiot Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website. If you haven't checked out the YouTube channel its here. Do subscribe if you can, lots more content is coming soon. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Paul O'Sullivan and the Science of Thermal Comfort 00:02:18 Thermal Comfort vs Air Quality: Different Lenses on Indoor Environment 00:04:07 Maslow's Hierarchy: Is Comfort a Luxury or a Necessity? 00:05:34 The Decarbonization Dilemma: Energy Efficiency vs Thermal Comfort 00:09:31 Expectation and Adaptation: The Psychology of Thermal Experience 00:14:29 The Cooling Ladder: A Design Philosophy for Passive Solutions 00:15:44 Where Are We With the Science? Progress and Gaps in Thermal Comfort 00:24:07 Defining Overheating: From Discomfort to Health Risk 00:24:15 The Measurement Challenge: 20 Different Ways to Assess Overheating 00:27:52 Conditioned vs Free-Floating: Two Different Overheating Problems 00:37:09 Ireland's Paradox: Overheating in a Cool Climate 00:37:16 The Building as Battery: Thermal Mass and Night Cooling Strategies 00:52:55 The Performance Gap: Why Simulations Don't Match Reality 01:00:40 The Data Desert: Why We Don't Know How Our Buildings Perform 01:20:50 Behavior and Technology: The Human Element in Building Performance 00:49:07 Ventilation's Role: Free Cooling Potential and Air Quality Trade-offs 00:56:08 Heat Recovery Dilemma: Winter Efficiency vs Summer Cooling Needs 01:10:20 Hybrid Solutions: The Future of Resilient Cooling 01:40:55 Climate Shelters: Schools as Community Heat Wave Refuges 01:43:36 Double Jeopardy: When Heat Waves Meet Power Outages and Poor Air Quality 01:26:51 The MESO Research Group: From Ventilative Cooling to Citizen Science 01:29:44 Window Aerodynamics: The Forgotten Performance Metric 01:34:55 European Standards: Translating Research into Design Tools 01:48:26 Citizen Science: Engaging Occupants in Building Performance Research 01:51:30 The Path Forward: Data, Standards, and Human-Centered Design
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    1 hr and 53 mins
  • OT30: Beyond the Numbers - What 95 Remote Workers Reveal About Home Office Wellbeing

    OT30: Beyond the Numbers - What 95 Remote Workers Reveal About Home Office Wellbeing
    Dec 11 2025
    Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and One Take, where we unpack the latest research shaping our understanding of indoor air and the built environment. This week, we're diving into a paper that tackles a question millions of us have been living with since the pandemic: What actually makes a good home office? The study is titled Home as an Office: Investigating the Associations Between Indoor Environmental Quality, Wellbeing and Performance in Work From Home Settings, and it explores a fascinating tension—between what sensors objectively measure and what people subjectively experience. The Setup: Researchers recruited 95 people working from home in Vancouver and Seattle and used a clever two-pronged approach. On one hand, participants were given desktop monitors that objectively measured PM2.5, total VOCs, CO₂, temperature, humidity, and sound levels—the hard numbers on the physical environment. On the other hand, they conducted detailed questionnaires asking people about their perceptions: Are you satisfied with the lighting? Do you have an ergonomic chair? Does noise from family interrupt you? They also measured outcomes using standardized surveys for psychological wellbeing, physical symptoms, and work performance. The Core Question: Which is the better predictor of wellbeing and productivity—the objective data from the sensors, or the subjective feelings of the occupants? The Surprising Finding: The data from the objective sensors—the actual measured levels of PM2.5, CO₂, and so on—showed predominantly weaker associations with how people felt or how productive they were. Even if CO₂ levels were a bit high or PM2.5 was slightly elevated, in this study it didn't have a strong direct link to reported wellbeing or performance. Why? The authors suggest that indoor environmental quality in most homes was generally moderate, but more importantly, people have agency at home. If you're cold, you can change the thermostat. If the air feels stuffy, you can open a window. This ability to control and adapt seems to weaken the direct link between what a sensor measures and how people actually feel. The Perception-Based Data Tells a Different Story: When researchers looked at subjective perception, they found much stronger connections. Satisfaction with ergonomic furniture, good daylight, and a pleasant workspace aesthetic were all strongly linked to positive wellbeing and performance outcomes. People who felt good about their physical setup felt better and worked better. The reverse was also true. Problems like unwanted interruptions from family, noise from the street, or even persistent kitchen odors were strongly associated with lower psychological wellbeing, reduced vitality, and depressed mood. The Big Takeaway: The paper's core message is not that objective indoor air quality doesn't matter—of course it does, especially at extreme levels. But in the context of working from home, our subjective experience of the space is a much better predictor of our wellbeing and performance than what a sensor might tell us. Perception really is reality here. The feeling of being in control, having a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing space, and not being constantly interrupted—these are not just fluffy nice-to-haves. The study shows they have measurable, statistically significant associations with our mental health and productivity. The Implications: This challenges a purely engineering-led, sensor-driven approach to creating healthy buildings. It tells us we can't just focus on hitting certain parts per million. We need a more holistic, human-centered approach. When we design spaces for home working—or frankly, any space—we need to think just as much about ergonomics, acoustics, privacy, and personal control as we do about ventilation rates. Home as an office: Investigating the associations between indoor environmental quality, well-being, and performance in work-from-home settings https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113310 The One Take Podcast in Partnership with SafeTraces and Inbiot Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Home Office Question We've All Been Asking 00:01:35 The Study Design: Measuring Both Objective and Subjective Reality 00:02:55 The Surprising Finding: Sensors Don't Tell the Whole Story 00:03:32 The Agency Factor: Why Home is Different from the Office 00:04:05 Perception is Reality: The Power of Subjective Experience 00:04:41 The Problems That Matter: Interruptions, Noise, and Kitchen Odors 00:05:07 The Big Takeaway: Beyond Parts Per Million 00:05:53 Implications: A Human-Centered Approach to Indoor Spaces 00:06:40 The Validation: Your Uncomfortable Chair Really Does Matter 00:07:07 Closing: Thanks and Next Week
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    8 mins
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