 Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Alex White. I'm delighted to have been asked to chair this afternoon's event, which is the second presentation of the 2022 environmental resilience lecture series co-organised by the IIEA and the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA. And I'd like to recognise at the outset and thank the EPA for their sponsorship of the series, very much hoping to hear from them in the course of our event this afternoon. And we look forward to that. But thank you, as always, to the EPA for their support and sponsorship. Today, we are delighted to be joined by Professor Joseph Allen, all the way from Boston. And I'd like to thank him for being so generous with his time to speak to us this afternoon. Joseph G. Allen is director of the Healthy Buildings Programme and an associate professor at Harvard CH Chan School of Public Health. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, he spent several years in the private sector, leading teams of scientists and engineers to investigate and resolve hundreds of indoor environmental quality issues, including sick buildings, so called sick buildings, cancer clusters, and biological chemical hazards. His academic research focuses on the critical role the indoor built environment plays in our overall health. In other words, leading experts on healthy buildings. Dr. Allen is a regular keynote speaker and advises leading global companies. He's the co-author of Healthy Buildings, Healthy Buildings, which is a reasonable title for a book, given his area of interest. The title of Professor Allen's presentations after tackling air pollution. He's going to speak to us for about 20 minutes, after which we'll move to the Q&A session. You'll be able to join that discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should be able to find easily enough on your screen. Feel free to send in your questions throughout the session as they occur to you. We'll also make that point at the outset if a question occurs. Don't wait until you think there's now time for questions. Just put it into the system and we'll have it there ready to go when we come to that part of the event. Please identify yourself, if you wouldn't mind, and your affiliation to any organization if indeed you have one. Today's presentation to remind you is and the Q&A are both on the record. And you can also join us on Twitter, by the way, if you're minded to do so. I can see on my screen that thankfully we are joined by our good friend and colleague, Dr Mihal Lahan, Director of the EPA's Office of Radiation Protection and Environmental Monitoring. And I'm going to invite Mihal now, if I may, to offer some opening remarks this afternoon. Mihal, you're more than welcome. Thank you, Alex. That's great. And just, I'd like to also echo that welcome to this second event and the Environmental Resilience Lecture Series is co-organized by ourselves and the IEA. I mean, you've mentioned there that Professor Allen, you know, will be highlighting the strategies today in combating air pollution in indoor environments. The ability to be hitting health effects of poor air quality and substandard housing conditions are often overlooked, but indoor air pollution leads to millions of premature deaths every year. And, you know, he'll be outlining the key findings, as you mentioned from his book, Healthy Buildings, how indoor spaces drive performance and productivity, which was recognized as best book of the year in Fortune Magazine and the New York Times for two consecutive years. And from our perspective, the EPA, we don't monitor indoor air quality, but we have established a national, extensive national ambient air quality monitoring network for outdoor air quality. And this network will be completed this year and consists of 116 stations located right across Ireland. And in addition, we've improved both the availability and the accessibility of air quality information from the network and thus an association with the health service executive, you know, developed and generated this national air quality index for health. Separately, and linked, though, is a true and EU funded project called Life Emerald. The EPA is developing models based on the monitoring data that we are collecting from our network, the variety Irish public with a three day forecast of ambient air quality, and they meant probably to make informed choice about their daily activities and now cast, which is providing modeled air quality information to fill in between the stations that are on the network and historical maps to give detailed information in local areas. So following the success of a citizen science project called Clean Air Together in Dublin, which had over 1000 citizens monitoring air quality, in this case a traffic related pollutant, around their homes, offices and schools. The EPA with on Tashka have recently launched the Clean Air Together in Cork. And if we've had a great response for the public there were over 900 participants taking part, and they've just begun that monitoring now. And for me, you know, this is all about yes it's about collecting valuable information about air pollution, but it's also about getting the people and the public engaged and involved around air quality and air quality issues. And the link, you know that the link between solid fuel combustion for home meeting in our towns and villages has a negative and the negative effects of the fine particulate matter PM 2.5 in ambient air is well understood. And it's been highlighted by ourselves in many successive reports over the years. The understanding of those impacts at low levels as well as this pollutant PM 2.5 has also informed the World Health Organization to reduce and significantly reduce its annual ambient air quality guidance level. And I think in addition to this, this is where today really is important I think for us and for everybody's interest in air quality. There's a growing volume of research and the impact of solid fuel heating systems on our indoor air quality. So really looking forward to listening more about the impacts air pollution on our indoor spaces and the strategies to combat air pollution indoor environments to make our homes or schools and our offices healthy places to live study and work in. So now invite Professor Allen to deliver his address. Thank you that was a really nice introduction and I'm looking forward to the conversation is quite an honor to be to be invited to hopefully set the stage for a rich conversation and question and answer session. On the topic of environmental resilience and specifically the role of buildings, right as we think about outdoor air pollution of course the dirty secret of outdoor air pollution is it penetrates indoors. Because we spend the vast majority of our life indoors, even as that outdoor air pollution concentration is reduced as it comes inside the majority of your exposure to outdoor air pollution occurs indoors. That should surprise that does surprise a lot of people to hear that majority of your exposure to outdoor air pollution can occur indoors. So this session is kind of set the stage for a rich discussion but also place buildings at the center of a lot of these problems we're talking about buildings consume 40% of global energy in some cities at 70 or higher 70% of global energy they're at the center of our climate crisis. We spend majority of our time indoors and we see an indoor, how the indoor environment influences our health. So because buildings as I hope to show are the center of the problems that means they're at the center of the solution center they have to be as we think about long term climate mitigation adaptation, and also healthier indoor environments. So I'd like to start my presentations with a little thought experiment asking people. What you know about healthy living. So if you ask a general audience, what do you know about healthy living and also how do you know what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. If you ask that question you're going to get good answers around things like this, I know I should exercise every day that's good for my health. I know I should eat healthy, and we know what healthy foods are we know what unhealthy foods are. We know that outdoor air pollution is bad for us, we know we shouldn't smoke cigarettes. And so, how do we know all of this. I'd argue that we have much of the knowledge or what the public understands constitutes healthy living comes from these great human epidemiological cohort studies. They follow tens of thousands of people for years decades and look at their lifestyle environmental factors genetic factors and health outcomes. And if you look at all of these great studies though you see a glaring hole, none of them talk about the role of the building. And because we don't look at the building in these great big studies these long term cohort studies. We have a knowledge gap, and the public therefore has the knowledge gap. So in its place what we have is a relatively small field of indoor air quality scientists, relatively under well underfunded grossly underfunded compared to other aspects of environmental health and public health. Yet it has an outsized impact on our health. We don't actually have to go much farther than look right at what happened with coven and why, and why this was such a problem, besides being novel to our immune systems. We had a failure to recognize that the building plays a critical role in keeping us safe from this respiratory virus and others. I've been writing about this from the beginning of the pandemic. Here's an article in the New York Times March 2020 placing buildings at the center of our response to the coven 19 crisis. Yet if you recall that time period, much of the guidance and it's still persist today was around full might transmission or shared surfaces or droplet transmission, and this idea that if you stay just two meters or six feet from somebody you're going to be safe and we were cleaning our deep cleaning buildings and people didn't want to handle the mail or be careful with groceries. We fundamentally missed that this virus is an airborne virus, nearly all spread happening indoors to spread through the air, all spread indoors nearly all. I mean, well buildings had to be the centerpiece of our response. And for much of the world miss this for a year or more. So I don't want to dwell on Kobe but I want to talk about four fundamental shifts that are coming out of Kobe as it relates to our buildings. The first is this, as we are here. Not together but you're all in your room watching this wherever you are. When you're with other people you're out at school the office the grocery store, we are constantly meeting emitting respiratory aerosols. These aerosols are all different sizes. The majority, if someone's infectious the majority of that virus travels in the smaller aerosols that trouble well beyond two feet two meters. This is a work we did with the New York Times visualizing respiratory aerosols in a classroom. Same thing would hold in any office conference room bus airplane. Very quickly you see that the aerosols of everyone in the room are mixing and they're traveling beyond this. They fill up the room. So we have all spread happening indoors we have aerosols that travel beyond two meters and a buildup of aerosols in under ventilated or under filtered spaces so the first key way is that the scientific and medical literature is being rewritten really was decades of over focused on droplet transmission these these large droplets that fall out of the air within two meters. That's being rewritten in the top medical journals the England Journal Medicine the Lancet Jamma. Global scientists agreeing on this. And it's this principle that as you have an infectious person, relatively quickly, these aerosols travel very quickly beyond two meters or six feet fill up an entire room and the concentration of infectious particles. Viral particles in in the air is dependent upon the size of the room, number of people infected and ventilation and filtration and with relatively simple strategies, increasing ventilation enhancing filtration, you can decrease the concentration. So that's number. First fundamental takeaway is this airborne transmission being recognized as the dominant mode of transmission we should have gotten this right in year one took several years to get there. And second key takeaway that says the focus on buildings now is not going away. We have a very savvy public now. Everyone is an effect is very knowledgeable and infectious disease infectious disease transmission. I always say my neighbor now talks to me about filtration and ventilation. The first thing I pulled from the website called glass door, which is where people talk about their jobs. Usually, they talk about salary and culture and what job title they have and what the work is like. Well they're also talking about their building. In my book I talk about it as your employees are interviewing your building. This is the first time that I thought was really quite interesting. This company now has this statement linked to their company forever, where someone says how is being in this office any different than being on a virus infected cruise ship for eight hours a day, five days a week. So employees are recognizing that the building is playing a role in their health. So if you've ever spread awareness of this, you have an entire media and social media media ecosystem focused on this. That's not going away anytime soon. And in fact, you have people now monitoring indoor air quality and reporting on it. I showed this on CNN this monitor, I have several monitors behind me right now, they're relatively low cost. So we're sharing this the same device now that used to be available only the scientists people can go in and they measure in the school the classroom in a coffee shop and they report on this in social media. So hyper aware public that is now has the tools to measure and verify indoor air quality. Okay. It has finally been recognized that buildings are central to this fight. I'm proud to have been an advisor to the White House for the past year in the US. As of February 2020 President Biden elevated buildings this clean air and buildings challenge elevated it on par with vaccines therapeutics testing in the pandemic response. That is a major shift and it will lead to a continued long term shift. And here's the what's coming next. The problem has been that you have buildings built designed for low ventilation rates. This is a figure showing 100 year history of ventilation rates. I'll go through all the detail but I want to point this out the dotted red line is the level at which we knew 100 years ago was sufficient or helpful in reducing or mitigate infectious disease transmission indoors. In the past 100 years globally we have decreased the ventilation rate. So is it any surprise, we have a novel virus that spread through the air. It's fairly indoors meets a building stock that is under ventilated we choked up the air supply in our buildings these respiratory aerosols build up and if you look at every single super spreader event. You'll find that same thing time indoors under ventilated under filtered. This is by design. We designed our buildings incorrectly for the past really been the past 40 years in particular, we've decreased our ventilation rate. If you about this, I want to highlight a report from the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, I chair the Lancet's task force on safe work safe school and safe travel. We put out a report just a couple weeks ago trying to simplify this, the first four strategies every building should pursue one, give your building a tune up, just like you do for your car. We do this every year for a car building similarly start to perform worse over time, we need to give them a tune up to bring them back to where they should be performing. So minimize ventilation rates, upgrade your filtration, deploy portable air cleaners where necessary. That's the third big change coming to fourth is this. This issue of COVID and ventilation air quality has now opened a much more broad conversation about all the factors in the indoor environment that influence help. So here's a report my Harvard team put out called the nine foundations of a healthy building. We're talking about water quality, lighting, biophilic design, the influence of dust and mold and acoustical quality and thermal conditions. And what I've seen is that the entry point to be thinking differently about our buildings was COVID ventilation air quality, and now major multinational organizations companies, the White House in the US are rethinking our entire strategy around how we can improve the condition for everybody indoors with a wider lens on what constitutes healthy buildings. I tell you I have more content, but I'm right at 820. And I want to be sure we have a lot of time for question and answer and discussion. But some of the other things maybe I'll just tee up before I finish here is that there's a great convergence happening. When you had a green buildings movement focused on energy efficiency and climate. You have a smart buildings movement, talking about sensors and smart buildings and maybe indoor air quality. You have the safety professionals and the safety and security community over here. Well there's this great convergence happening now that has to happen and it's converging around healthy buildings. Because we have to design buildings that are both optimized for human health and safety and comfort, without ignoring the building buildings contribution to climate change. And there's been this false dichotomy presented for decades that we have to have either a healthy building higher ventilation rates use more energy or energy efficiency. We choke off the air supply and have an unhealthy building. That's false. And there are many examples of how we can actually optimize both optimize indoor health, while making sure we're protecting health beyond the four walls of the building through better energy decision There's a lot to talk about on the climate side sustainability side, healthy materials, the business case for healthy buildings. I want to see what you all want to talk about. And I'll say this last thing before we get to question answer and wrap it up on a high note here. Like I said that buildings are the center of all these problems that means they're the part they're centered to the solution set is not just that we don't know what to do we actually have the tools available to us. Nothing less than this is at stake. The decisions we make today regarding our buildings determines our collective health now and for generations. That is said without exaggeration. So I want to thank you for letting me open up just a few comments hopefully to see the nice conversation here and I'm looking forward to what questions and comments. You all have thank you. Thank you so much. And, in fact, you did a lot better than 20 because of course you, you could have, you could have taken a few more minutes because you were giving you credit for the fact that are my introduction and beholds introduction were there as well. So we're only just up on 20 past and our people I'm sure are very interested but they're a little slow coming with their questions but we've got some already. If that occurred to me I just ask you, and you did an interesting contextual reference at the outset so during COVID so much of what the public health advice and the, you know, government advice had to do with proximity of individuals and all the stuff that we were told you know two meters and support. And whereas some so many other things were not in fact referenced or at least not referenced sufficiently early on, or in a sufficiently robust manner that seemed to come into the debate, although there were some voices perhaps some lone voices even here in Ireland and furnace, and who were saying that these were that this was the agenda we should be looking at. And just that I wonder had to do with the kind of imperative of, you know, getting the advice out so that stuff that could be done quickly, you know, stuff that people felt they could do quickly, maybe was in the area of proximity and you know, handwashing and all the hygiene, and that there may have been a perception and really I suppose this is my question I wonder how fair is that perception that really the things we need to do with buildings are going to take longer. They're much more obviously at the design and build stage well then that's, that's to do with the design and build of a building, and even some of the adjustments that might might usefully be made to buildings they take time. I'm just wondering, could you reflect for a few minutes on that whole business of like the kind of the the timelines are the sort of change that you say are most important perhaps mitigating against the public health advice is the fear that these things just take too long to rectify. I think it was a couple of really good points there and, and we could talk about really what implementation looks like. I think that's fair. I tell you the first piece I wrote before that New York Times piece in March 2020 was early February 2020. In financial times, and it placed buildings at the forefront of the response, but acknowledge that there was a lot of uncertainty. And until that uncertainty was resolved, we should do a lot of everything. Which meant, yeah, hand washing makes a lot of sense distancing makes sense there's in your cone of emissions is greater at close distance. So that makes sense. My real issue was that in the, in the totality of response in the early days and early months in fact the first year, the buildings were ignored so it was very much a, we should do all this stuff we tried everything flatten the curve we did a little everything but we didn't do a little thing when it came to ventilation and filtration. And my goal like many scientists around the world wasn't just me there are plenty of voices out there trying to raise the alarm I co authored a piece to the WHO in science with an international group of colleagues all over the world. Great scientists and indoor equality, raising the alarm on this thing. Well this has to be part of the discussion. And we don't do these other things masking was important all this was very important, until we resolved it, right it's precautionary principle but we had evidence before SARS cope to, for example, SARS one, we had evidence was spread via the airborne route. So there was a lot of pushback that so we don't really know. In fact, if you look at my fields scientific literature we know that ventilation and filtration are key to reducing risk from influenza indoors and measles and TV and SARS one so we had plenty of we had everything we needed to know. And if you look at that first report is very similar to this last report I mentioned the first four. So what were the first things we're calling for better ventilation better filtration, and portable air cleaners. So let me address the implementation question. This fair. Well this is too expensive to overhaul my mechanical HPAC system or it takes two years to do this. It's too expensive. I don't think that's the case one on the expense side. There was, and if you had billions of dollars of stimulus globally. Right. And we the money was there in terms of the response is also not expensive to do these fixes. And we also laid out a plan for what you can do in the short term, while you address let's say the building level systems that might take longer. For example, written 50 articles and New York Times Washington Post in the US saying, we could deploy portable air cleaners, and I talked to all the manufacturers they had the stock available portable air cleaner with the HEPA filter. You could put in this room or any room and if you size it right. You can get four five six air changes per hour of clean air typical home in the US has half an air change per hour typical school has one and a half air changes. One and a half hour of air with a simple plug and play device that costs a couple hundred dollars let's take schools for classrooms US dollars. That's a couple dollars per student per year. You could clean the air, while you're thinking about how to spend stimulus dollars on an overhaul of your mechanical system if that's what's needed. So we have the short term solutions, while we could build to the longer upgrades if needed. If you look at this first four report from the Lancet, I think it's really important because we got our expert group of international scientists. And we got together and said, What are the four things if every building did it's very doable, not expensive and would really move the needle or you know improve the condition of people in buildings residential offices at factories. And the first one is really important that tune up idea. Because that's something every building can do right now, and buildings have are built to a design standard not a performance standards they slip over time. And if we just brought buildings back up to the way they were performed. That improves empirically studies have been shown improves overall indoor air quality, and saves energy good for climate and saves money. So it's actually a cost saving approach that improves indoor air quality. That's the absolute first thing that has to be done and then you could think about how do I go above and beyond with filtration ventilation and use these portables as a stop gap measure. So I don't think it's the case. I think it's a fair question. A lot of people have that question I don't think healthy buildings are expensive I don't think they're hard to do, and we have short term things we can do to respond while we work on longer term improvements. And so plenty of questions coming in now and plenty of interest. I'm going to put, I'm going to pitch two questions at you. First of all, a Theodorus van Veltovan asks a simple and straightforward question. What's a cost effective and easy measure that many people could take to improve the air quality of their own dwelling. And I suppose ally to that is the fact that so many of us are are working from home so much as as indeed I am today for example and many people do so. Simple and easy measure cost effective and easy measure and then I'm going to put the other one to you as well at the same time if you don't mind sort of memorizing both short question as well. Certainly Joseph Brogan says that research has shown that plant based ionizers are effective in significantly reducing aerosols indoors. Is this hybrid approach the way forward he's one. So a couple thoughts there I like the question about the home and I'll take it beyond COVID how do we prove into our quality first. Let's take the source control. I think we have to do a better job at thinking about the products we put in our homes. We have to be low volume organic chemicals, thinking about other semi volume chemicals like these forever chemicals if you're not familiar with them the stain repellent chemicals that actually associated with the whole health, whole host of adverse health effects. So do a better job. In terms of our, the source control, switching out natural gas stoves for electric stoves natural gas stoves and then a whole host of indoor pollutants that are bad for respiratory health exacerbate asthma. So that's number one, to I think some simple things if you don't have mechanical air should be opening up the windows as much as we can increase ventilation rate so I'm a bad example here. So my CO2 levels I have my meter somewhere, you know, generally very high in my in my office unless I crack open the window a little bit. We've really tightened up our buildings. We can when the weather's nice open up the window some really simple things. I'll give people a tip on that one. My Harvard team wrote a report called homes for health. And if you just search on this look up Harvard healthy buildings, homes for health. We have 36 expert tips for a healthier home, kick off your shoes before you walk in the door, ventilate make sure you're above your stove you have exhaust ventilation. You're capturing these these pollutants and particles when you cook simple things really written for the public simple things you can do. So there's a lot we can actually do to improve our health, and especially in our homes. Great second question on ionization. I think there's a lot of new technologies out there in terms of ionization. I am. I'm usually cautious when I'm sorry I'm not anti new technology I'm just cautious I think we have to evaluate any new technology across these three questions. Does it work. Simple enough. Does it is it doesn't produce any potentially harmful by products. And three, what problem is it solving is it replacing one of those first four measures, because they're not sufficient. So the first one I think on the ionizer question depends on the technology depends on the exact tool but I think there's lots of debate about how effective they are. To say I think for me the idea of releasing anything into the air constantly whether it be a chemical or ions. We have to be careful that we're we are fundamentally changing the air you can create secondary pollutants, like ultra fine particles, or you can you can convert complex VOCs into other VOCs that maybe respiratory hazard. So that is it changing the air and is it safe. I think it depends on the technology how it's deployed at things like this. And third what's it replacing. So we just solve this with better ventilation better filtration which we know come with a lot of other benefits. I can talk a lot about plants and biofueled design if that comes up another question but I would just be. I would think about those questions and think about new technology, those three questions. Does it work. Is it safe, and also fundamentally what is it solving that can't be solved through these other methods that have decades of science behind them supporting their benefits. Patrick Kenny asks whether you'd comment and on current US research on impacts of mold and spores on indoor health and how building design can either mitigate or worsen their impacts. Yeah we've been doing a lot of research there. And this is my decades old old field but it's one of the nine foundations of a healthy building. There's a lot of moisture control specifically for that reason. And I think, you know, I, the, the evidence is really clear, or, you know, across the different species of fungi and mold. The health concerns and the irritation they can cause and also but the control measures there are relatively straightforward, right if you're monitoring or monitoring. If you're controlling water damage or respond to water damage controlling moisture, such that you have you're limiting the conditions for mold growth that can mitigate the problem also if you see it you remediate I think that the remediation is really quite clear and the guidance is clear and how to mitigate or remediate if there's a mold issue. One of the areas we've been really interested in we started new research here that I can share maybe next year. Research funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States looking at water damage and mold and moisture specifically after natural disasters like hurricanes. So what happens when you have an event like we just had hurricane in in the United States of devastated parts of Florida. And what do you do as people start to reoccupy these places, and now you have severe water damage, and amongst all the other hazards. You have the potential and real threat of mold growth indoors so that's where we're moving our research to to think about climate events and these indoor threats. So the presentation here health and safety review and it's called and we've got Margaret Kirby from health and safety review asking just to clarify what is meant by bringing buildings back to performance standards. Could you explain that further. Yeah, sure. So, I quickly talked on like the hundred year history of ventilation rates so one of the standard setting bodies for ventilation and buildings let's talk about this is ash rate and and largely. And then followed internationally gets into building codes, ash rate, these ventilation standards are named the standards for acceptable indoor air quality, ventilation for acceptable indoor quality. That shouldn't be acceptable, we shouldn't be taking bare minimums I want healthy indoor air quality. In addition the standards of design standards not performance standards such that by built a building 10 years ago. The standards says 18 cubic feet per minute per person nine liters per second per person. So some volume some amount of air right some number of air changes. So I built my building to that that became code wherever it is in Ireland US rivers. Over time, I don't give my building a tune up performance is going to slip. Right just like your car performance would slip if you don't give it a tune up. So now you have a design standard that's not designed for health. The building is falling even further below that. Now, let's take air change per hour to explain this little bit. Let's take classrooms and schools in the US I've been thinking a lot about schools, three air changes per hour. Over time, most US schools are now at one and a half air change per hour despite the design standard being here, and despite the target being four to six. Well, I'm very much interested in getting the buildings that are already getting 456 air changes even higher and better filtration. The majority of our benefit right now. If we would be just focusing on those buildings that are chronically under ventilated and bringing them back to the way they were designed in the first place, then we can say, I've given my building a tune up. So it's back to the way it was designed. And what else can I do? Can I bump up ventilation? Can I bump up filtration? Do I need a new fan? Do I need to overhaul the system? Maybe it's something simple. And so, but all of the most of the benefits going to come from bringing the poorest performing buildings back to the way they're designed and then go above and beyond. I also like the idea of performance based standards. I think that's where real time sensor technology comes in. Because how do you know if you're building slipping? Well, it's taking the pulse of the building. So you go to the doctor, right? What's the first thing she does when you walk in? No matter what you're there for, they check your pulse, blood pressure, maybe your weight. So we need to do this for our buildings to say, how do you know if it's slipped from that standard? Well, we have to measure it and think about performance standards that says it's designed one way but we can measure now with low cost sensors, indoor air quality performance and make sure it's staying where it should be and then also target these higher standards. So getting a whole bunch wrapped up in that. The standards are not designed for health. They're performance, they're design standards. We forget about them. They're not performance standard. And we have the tools and technology to do performance based standards. I would relate that because obviously a lot of people here are thinking right across the world. I'm sure thinking about their domestic buildings and having them assessed in terms of their sustainability and respect of heat and ventilation and so on and they're thinking about what they might do to improve that. How do we link this tune up that you're talking about to the sorts of assessments that are done by people and that need that are required to be done for people, for example, who are looking at maybe solar panels are looking at do something to improve the, to improve their homes from that perspective. I mean, should the two be part of the same process or what's your reflection on that? I think they have to be part of the same process and I think they haven't been. So clearly, right, it's a residential, we all spend the vast, vast majority of our time. And maybe even more so now for a lot of people since COVID. So, if you think about, so you can have energy efficient improvements to our building. So we mitigate or we put on solar panels on a supporter of what's called the electrify everything movement where we have to get off fossil fuels and our buildings that improves indoor health and also improves outdoor health. So we can when we make, we have to be making those improvements. Right. And we released a paper in the US is showing as the US has moved away from cold fired power plants, the dominant source of health damages in the majority of states in the US is from on site fossil fuel combustion within building fossil fuel combustion. So we're going to have to do that and it comes with the health benefit for people indoors comes with a climate benefit. And because the dominant emissions are now coming from buildings in a lot of places. It becomes an equity issue it's a commute you're reducing the air pollution emitted in your local community or local region, no longer just regional coal fired power plants and regional air pollution localized impacts, real localized impacts. So we have to do all that where I think we have to be careful is that sometimes in our green building efforts or energy efficient efforts, we have tightened up our building envelopes. So much that we've stopped letting our buildings breathe. If you look at what happened in the US in the 1970s global energy crisis in the 1970s. In response, we started to tighten up our buildings, save energy. That sounds great. It also ushered in the sick building era. That's when that term started to appear the early 1980s. It makes sense we had, we have products that admit high levels of off gas and chemicals we have our gas stoves emitting into the home, and now we're not letting our buildings breathe you have an end up build up of indoor pollutants tied to good and important energy efficiency goals, but they were at odds with each other. But if you look at new technologies that are available they don't have to be at odds. You can bring in more outdoor air using energy recovery ventilation for example. Where you're retaining the heated or the cooled air and you're not wasting all that energy. But I don't think we can have a future where we say we're going to sacrifice indoor or health indoors for energy efficiency goals, just like I don't think we say we have a healthy building that doesn't do well for the environment by our energy choices. And there are great examples out there in the residential sector in the commercial sector advised on JP Morgan's new headquarters in midtown Manhattan, all electric tower, double the ventilation rates. So it's beautifully sustainable, all electric and higher ventilation rates better filtration better indoor air quality real time indoor quality monitoring. And that's really where the future is going. We have to marry these, these disciplines that have been at odds for 40 years and not have to really important public comparisons, maybe pulling against each other or at least the risk that they are seen by people as being in conflict where in truth they're not in conflict at all the opposite is the case. So brolic on and the IEA member of the IEA here he says he was asking, and you can comment on this but in fact you've touched on it, should the installation of mechanical ventilation heat recovery systems be part of public policy for domestic residents, as is the case. In relation to the installation of heat pumps now. I think absolutely I think it's a smart comment. Yeah, clearly right we have that. I love the idea of heat pumps, ground source heat pumps air source heat pumps network we just had a networked ground source heat pumps in Massachusetts we're piloting. I think there are all these clever ideas but yes clearly as we do a better job of heating and cooling our buildings we don't waste all that that energy so energy recovery ventilation heat recovery ventilation is just really smart and the technology is ready. And it kept me down. Yeah, two questions they're going to put you and they're not related at all but just because they're short we can take them together. Peter Murphy wonders whether I mean this is maybe it just a rhetorical kind of question that he has, which is fair enough, do you think that employers are fearful of measuring the indoor air quality of their workplaces. Then Dr Sean Orion asks you directly, is it dangerous to live near a motorway. How far away from a motorway is safe. Two great questions. Okay, so the first one, our employees fearful. I said, I think yes some some right there's some organizations that just want to do well and and and they're not fearful but I'll tell you a quick story about my own field so I'm a certified industrial hygienist done this kind of work for decades. I'd say in the past here's how it's gone. You've had an indoor air quality complainer company, you'd hire an expert. They would go take some measurements would end up in a report sometimes to go to the legal department would never see the light of day. Right. Maybe they took corrective action. Maybe they didn't. And companies a lot. I'm not sure I want to measure because what if I find something good company say I want to find something if it's bad and then fix it. Some not great companies say I don't even want to look. Here's a massive shift that's coming where that paradigm is being blown up. The proliferation of these low cost sensors means that the, the information asymmetry is over companies held all that power. Now if you're not measuring in your building, I'm an employee, I go in I take my handheld device. I go into your office, and I'm telling you what the problem is. I'm in control of the data. I'm going to share it on glass door on Facebook on tiktok whatever it is social media I'm going to say hey company X, why aren't you dealing with that indoor equality. That is a major shift so the power has shifted you have a highly knowledgeable public now about indoor air quality because of cove it. And now they have the tools they don't need a $10,000 scientific instrument anymore. A couple hundred dollars, and that'll keep getting cheaper. So that's really important I don't think employees and companies can hide anymore from indoor equality in fact I advise them to get on top of it start monitoring now so that if somebody comes in with a device that they can manipulate. You can say well that's your reading but we have the whole system over here and we're verifying that air quality is good. That's a better strategy. Good question. So about motorways yeah you know there's a lot of research on distance to roadways it depends on the distance. Wind direction all of these factors but yes there's a lot of studies showing proximity to roadway is a risk factor for things like asthma, or higher or asthma exacerbations. The exact, I can't give you an exact distance but lots of studies have been done on distance and particle pollution and transport. Let me let me turn it into a positive though, even if you are near roadway. You can design an operated building such that you minimize that impact. The indoor air pollution penetrates indoors I opened with that the dirty secret of outdoor air pollution. But if you use some of these same strategies I talked about that are good for coven. Good ventilation and filtration. Good ventilation you still want to bring an outdoor air but now you have high quality filtration you're capturing a lot of those air pollutants before they enter the space. And we see this, even in, we just finished a global study of indoor equality. And even in the buildings in China with terrible outdoor air pollution. So not specific to roadways just place with bad outdoor air pollution. You saw buildings that have good filtration strategies could disentangle that effect, meaning outdoor air pollution was high indoor levels were low like you'd find in a good building anywhere in the world, because they manage ventilation filtration well. Now the opposite was true to there were many buildings that didn't manage ventilation filtration and the indoor pollution levels were really quite high. So similar thing with the roadway thing I leave it on a positive that yeah distance the roadway matters but we could also mitigate that depending on the choices we make in terms of our building strategies. Thank you, Martin McCarthy is wondering about the. What he describes as the trend for open plan offices, and he says also open plan dwellings and what do you think they're generally better or worse for indoor air quality. Yeah I've seen a lot of talk about this is a big report recently in the US and the New York Times on this and lots of bait with the companies. My answer is this, I think like anything there's good and open, there's good and bad open floor plans, just like there's good and bad close floor plans. So let's take, but let's get a little more specific, I think there's a lot of concern about open for plans being higher risk for covert and other infectious diseases. I don't think that's the case. I think it depends on what your ventilation filtration strategy is. I worked on a designed open floor plans that are that are great. It could be bad you could overpack people into a space high occupant density with poor ventilation that's going to be a problem from an infectious disease standpoint. I've also seen that happen, but the opposite happening closed office spaces where you know is that the answer where you box everybody back up. Well in that case I've seen low ventilation low filtration bad lighting detachment of the core of the room from access to natural light as a whole host of other factors that come into it. And I think that conversation on open floor plans has gotten too narrow it hasn't taken the holistic view short answers I think you could do good open floor plans and bad open I don't think there's one straightforward answer despite I think what people have taken really really hard line positions on one, you know being good or bad. I just think it's in the implementation of it really and controlling these. I'm very much on the nine foundations of the healthy building you control those factors. Then it's going to be a healthy space and I think you could do it either way with closed offices or open floor plans. Interesting. Let's go back to Patrick Kenny of the EPA, and he's asking you to comment on the US experience of the impacts of different heating systems in particular solid fuel heating systems on indoor air, especially fine particulate matter concentrations. Well, this is really it's a great question. And, you know, even some of the most aggressive and good building energy efficiency laws like in New York City has local on 97. Fail to recognize or, or legislate against biomass or, or, or wood burning, which has the hot one highest emission rate for particulates which causes, you know is not can be the dominant source of health damages localized health damage or localized health damage from emissions. So, I think this is critically important it's well documented that these are these are these have a big impact on air quality indoors and also a study by my colleague at Harvard graduate school design, showing that emissions of the solid fuel burning does actually impact air quality, even you know just neighborhood air quality. So I think it's a big, I think it's a big problem and we and we and we so we can make some mistakes here and my another colleague talks about it this way, we can we can choose some carbon neutral fuels, you know renewable biomass right carbon neutral fuels that aren't health neutral. I think that would be a mistake, right as we think about our renewable energy goals, we have to be careful that we're not using something that's good for carbon, but may cause a health concern. Yeah, really, that's a really good, really good question I think a lot of legislation around a building energy efficiency sometimes ignores that point. Lydia from OSA had a question earlier and I'm hoping it's clear and that's not not a criticism Lydia I'm just not sure if when I read it, it makes total sense to me but hey, what how would it make sense to me it probably does make sense to you so I'll give it a shot. And she says we have lead LWD certification systems, and there is a credit for indoor air quality. Could you please give examples of best cases in the USA or elsewhere where this is taken, she's taking with us taken beyond construction and indoor air is at the core of the construction. I imagine that the end of that question is really is the core of the question as well. So, could you address that. Yeah, it's a great question so lead is from the US Green Building Council but there are global green building standards that are similar leadership and energy and environmental design. Really you had a, you know a 20 year great run a lot of buildings have the lead plaque on them saying their energy efficient and absolutely correct in let's say whatever the total points that are available there are some credits and available points. If you focus on indoor air quality. I don't think lead goes anywhere near far enough in terms of indoor air quality. So it's mostly energy efficiency there's some part of indoor quality probably can't have too many points if it's about energy efficiency around indoor quality it's the absolute basics. So when I see a lead building I don't necessarily think it has to be great indoor air quality because you can just score a couple of points on their scoring. I like it for what it's done on the energy efficiency side. That said they're great examples of companies that have placed health at the core of design for new buildings and even existing building so in the new buildings encourage you to look up that JP Morgan headquarters right in midtown Manhattan. So focus on both energy and health and goes way beyond what lead would have an indoor quality in fact goes way beyond what anybody else is pushing right now in terms of healthy building so their examples like that there's examples on residential. There's also great examples on improving on existing buildings. So I work with a lot of big multinational companies names you would know that are overhauling their entire portfolio. So first benchmarking. What does my portfolio look like in terms of indoor quality I don't mean a handful of lead credits, I mean, all around the nine foundations of the healthy building whatever other score, or whatever system you want to use or whatever reference you want to use, but basically saying let's do a deep dive on lighting, water quality, biophilic design acoustics indoor air quality ventilation filtration, the whole thing go deep and say, Well what are the current standards, but really what is the science saying we should be doing right now. Well beyond standards. And in that case you see entire portfolios being redesigned around new healthy building standards or retrofitted to new healthy building standards. So I think lead is maybe a good starting point I give them credit for acknowledging indoor quality. 20 years ago and lead started really grow. I don't think it's nearly far enough. I don't think it's comprehensive. And I wouldn't use it as the basis to say I did lead in my building I have, you know, leading class indoor air quality. It's good starting point but that's where that's where that's it is a starting point. There's been quite a few questions about asking you that you've done we're already asking you about best practice in the US and so on and you've been very generous in terms of saying you know, there, there is information available there are resources there. You have been responsible for yourself and you know that the book and various other sources of information. You mentioned some buildings even high profile market Kirby kind of came back on that point. And I feel a little bad that we may have curtailed you a little bit too much when you were doing your slides. And I'm wondering, because market is wondering, what can companies do in relation to the four strategies mentioned in the slides and you know, she was wondering because you give examples in relation to the four. I imagine you'll say look, you can pursue that further. I mean if you can give any examples in relations for strategies please do we're probably coming up on time now but where would people go to look for more detail on those four strategies. Yeah yeah so I'll give you so you can look at our Lancet COVID-19 Commission Task Force, SafeWorks, Safe School, but let me just do it quickly because it'll give you some resources so that first one right called commissioning your building at a tuna. So you want to look for a local engineering firm HVAC contractor and tell them you want to commission your systems do continuous commissioning, which means they go out there and they check to make sure it's working are the filters installed right already fans burned out, just, just making sure your building's performing. And here's how we know it works. This great study at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the US showing that it saves money improves indoor air quality. And it's actually going to it's a process going to save you money, and it's the baseline it establishes to let you know what your systems are currently doing. And you asked that same contract how can I improve it. So look for a good HVAC contractor environmental engineering firm. As that starting point other basics, increasing ventilation that could be opening up the windows increasing the amount of air flow into your space on filtration number three minimum standard right now should be Merv 13 filters. So Merv eight captures about 20% of particles. The way I describe it is that a Merv eight filter designed to protect the equipment, not people and Merv 13 filter designed to protect people captures 80 90% of airborne particles. That's particles from outdoor air pollution from roadway or particles generated by respiratory system. So upgrade to Merv 13 filters, fourth one portable air cleaners simple portable air cleaners. I give you a rule of thumb, look for one with a good HEPA filter. And what's called a clean air delivery rate, my rule of thumb look for a clean air delivery rate, CADR of 300 for every 500 square feet, they got to convert that to meters for 300 CADR for every 500 square feet of space will give you between four and six air changes per hour. So really simple strategies hope that sounded simple. It is that report is really short. Lots of guidance out there and the book goes into a lot more detail around all the nine foundations of a healthy building if you're thinking about what my recommendations are for ventilation or lighting acoustics these other factors. I was astonished at what you said about the majority of the exposure to outdoor pollution occurs indoors. And I suppose when you when you think about it, perhaps we shouldn't be as astonished because it does a logic to that but still it was quite a stark statement that you made at the And it's interesting and keep so going from business to the back to the domestic Keelan O'Sullivan as a researcher here at the IIA points out that Ireland is one of the highest rates of asthma prevalence in the world and the most common chronic disease affecting children and the most common chronic respiratory disease in adults. So wondering again, how can I'm coming up on the air but how can Irish people manage their indoor spaces to reduce asthma triggers. Yeah, I think that's a big question. But they're a handful of things and I'll go back to the source control right it's a whole bunch of asthma triggers outdoor air pollution allergens and dust in the home right so managing dust and allergens and cockroach allergens mouse allergens things that are all around us all the time can be triggers. We have indoor triggers like gas stoves that trigger asthma or exacerbate asthma. We have the penetration of outdoor pollutants inside. So I actually think I take it on this big level question so improve our climate goals want to electrify everything remove fossil fuel combustion indoors that's going to help against asthma. So definitely do a better job with our material selection, lower chemical loads, avoiding some of these asmogens that are in the space, better cleaning with HEPA filters control the dust level and the allergen loading, improve filtration, the same portable air cleaners that reduce particles. These particles penetrate from indoors these particles that we know are associated with asthma. You reduce that concentration. And of course big picture. We continue our push or climate goal push of cleaning the energy grid, because major source of outdoor air pollution a major source of mortality and asthma and health are coming from these, you know, from coal fire power plants natural gas power plants we need to continue our push to reduce fossil fuels for the climate goals long term health benefits but it provides immediate benefits provides immediate benefits in terms of better health including emissions and asthma for kids and adults. And isn't that just to finish up is isn't that a really rich source of kind of public policy and public and encouragement of conduct, where we can say look when we're talking about the climate agenda, and pressing for rapid change in that in that on that agenda that we can. Isn't there a need to communicate more perhaps to people that there's also a gain and immediate gain in terms of things like air quality. And I know that's something that, you know, governments are trying to do, because the communication of so much of what needs to be done on the climate agenda has got actually negative connotations to it you've got to stop this you've got to stop you know you must be change your lifestyle, no more turf number, the more cold obviously no more oil. You know you've got to you've got to change things around and it's a long term people think well that's maybe if I can do it I will if I can afford it I will but it's going to take investment. You shouldn't part of I will finish on this and you said it really but just to emphasize it. Part of the communication of what needs to be done on the climate agenda really needs to fold in and much more clearly to the immediate gains that people get in their daily lives in relation to something like air quality. I'm exactly right and I'll end it really quickly and we make this case in the book. But we want to improve conditions for everyone's health want to act on climate. It's also just good for our health in the immediate and it's just good business if your business owner out there, I co authored my book with Harvard with a Harvard business school professor john McComber for a reason. So just good business to help us think better work more productive reduces asthma attacks yes while addressing the long term challenges of climate change and helps against coven and whatever whatever else threat comes it's just. It's a really a win win on all levels it's good economically good financially good for climate good for immediate health so that framing is exactly right there immediate benefits and we can act selfishly for own health our own business at the same time will actually be helping collectively and acting for everybody at the same time we can have it all. Thank you so much. I want to thank Joseph Allen Professor Joseph Allen for joining us this afternoon here on this webinar. It's been most interesting and stimulating. I think we could go for another hour we've done so much interest in it, particularly that point towards the end how we integrate these you know different imperatives that we have in terms of public policy but your concentration on buildings. And the points are just so well made this afternoon want to thank you for that. Again, thank the colleagues at the Environmental Protection Agency for sponsoring and supporting this event. And thank you for joining us. If you happen and many of you have for the last hour and we'll see you all again before too long. Thank you very much.