 Good morning everyone. My name is Megan Lowry. I'm a media officer with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Thank you for joining us this morning for a webinar in the report that was just released last month titled Why Indoor Chemistry Matters. You can now download a copy of the report and other supporting materials at www.nap.edu and we'll also chat that link out to you. And recording of this webinar will be available on our website in the coming weeks. For those of you who are not familiar with the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, we are private nonprofit institutions that provide independent objective analysis and advice to the U.S. to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology and medicine. For each requested study panel members are chosen for their expertise and experience and they serve pro bono to carry out the study statement of task. The reports that result from the study represent the consensus view of the committee and must undergo external peer review before they are released as did this report. I have with me several members of the committee to discuss the report but before I introduce them I want to go over just a few brief reminders. Please note that this webinar is scheduled to last one hour. So we'll start off with a presentation summarizing the reports findings by committee members, and then we'll open it up to any questions you may have once the presentation concludes. And to ask a question, just click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and you can ask a question submitted at any time during the presentation. So with that I'll turn it over to Dr. David Dorman, who served as chairs of the committee. Thank you Megan. Welcome everyone. It's my honor to give you a briefing on this consensus report that our committee just developed. And what we hope to do is by the end of this hour you'll have a better understanding of why indoor chemistry matters. And so feel free to ask the committee members questions because we're here to try to answer your questions about what we did. We're looking forward to this webinar for the next hour or so. As Megan mentioned, there are several different ways that you can download the report. This is one of the QR code links to the report. If you feel inclined to do that I've also provided you with the physical website link to where you can also download it. And again, these are freely available at the Academy website. And you can also order a pre publication copy if you would want to have a hard copy of the report, and not just electronic copy. So this consensus report really began with discussions between National Academy staff and the sponsors of the report. And ultimately what those discussions led to was a collection of statement of task and basically the statement of task is the guiding principles by which our committee was asked to work. And so the National Academy's convened our committee, it was an ad hoc committee of scientific experts to try to look at the state of the science regarding chemicals and indoor air. And they are charged to the committee required us to focus on several things. First, we were asked to look at new findings about previously under reported chemical species, chemical reactions and sources of chemicals, as well as their distribution of chemicals within the indoor environment. And the second task that we were asked to do is to try to understand and explain how indoor chemistry findings fit into a broader context of what's already known about linkages between chemical exposure, air quality and human health. There are other elements to the statement of tasks that I'll get to in a moment. But one thing I do want to just discuss is our committee when we were asked to look at new findings, for example, of under reported chemicals. Most of our report actually deals with science that's emerged over the past decade or so. So in our way that we approach this task, what we tried to do is focus in on new studies that have come out in the past 10 years or so. So there are some other elements to our statement of tasks that we were asked to do so we were asked to consider how the report findings and recommendations could actually be go into potential near to opportunities for incorporating what is known about indoor chemistry into practice. We were asked to look at how additional chemistry research could be critical for improving our understanding of the chemical composition of indoor air and adverse effects associated with those exposures. As appropriate we also were asked to consider how such research could be advanced by addressing methodological or technological barriers, or how we could enhance coordination or collaboration in order to improve our understanding of indoor air chemistry. The committee was also asked to provide some recommendations for how to communicate its findings to affected stakeholders and you the public are indeed one of our affected stakeholders and so in some ways this webinar is trying to meet part of that statement of what you'll notice in the last sentence is that the statement of task asked us to focus in on non industrial exposures within buildings, and we interpreted that to include not only home environments, but some also additional buildings as well including hospitals and schools. So as I mentioned I was able to chair the committee that was, you know, quite a bit of work over the last couple of years on the part of all the committee members and our committee composition here as identified and what I just want to draw your attention to is several different things. One of the differences that the committee has broad representation from governmental agencies from non governmental organizations to academics. And not only are we drawn from different sub disciplines, but, and different locations and different organizations but we also contribute different scientific expertise. In the committee we had experts in engineering and chemistry and indoor air chemistry in particular we had expertise with environmental health and epidemiology. We had expertise with respect to toxicology and other scientific disciplines. So collectively this group of individuals then was able to look broadly at this topic of indoor chemistry. We also wanted to thank Megan here is who served as the project officer for national academies and we also wanted to thank the other staff within national academies for supporting our committee's activities over the past two years. So as I mentioned the reports freely available at the website and what I want to do is just give you a kind of a look at what the how the report has been structured and also discuss some of the main messages that the committee has come up with. So the way the report was actually structured as you'll find that we have an introductory section in the summary of the report, but then we have individual chapters that are dedicated to different portions of indoor chemistry. For example, we have one chapter that's dedicated to investigating primary sources and reservoirs of chemicals indoors. For example, how does cooking in the indoor environment, for example, contribute to chemicals that are found indoors. We have a second chapter that's looking at partitioning of chemicals in the indoor environment and for when we talk about partitioning what we're interested in is how chemicals can move between different phases so for example some chemicals might be found in the air. But those chemicals might also in some cases become deposited on different surfaces that are found within a home or other building environment. So this partitioning this movement of chemicals from one location within an environment to another one is a dedicated portion of our report. The chemicals in the indoor air can also undergo chemical reactions they can become transformed, so they can react with each other, and they can form different products. And in many ways, some of those products we don't know as well characterized and we don't always know the toxicity of some of those products as well. So we have a chapter dedicated to chemical transformations. Each chapter is dedicated to management of chemicals in the indoor environment so for example how does ventilation or other approaches that could be used to mitigate indoor chemistry. What are their impacts in this indoor environment. And then one other chapter is looking at the linkages between indoor chemistry and human exposure and human health. So obviously that's an important part of our statement of task and so we've dedicated an entire chapter to that discussion. And finally our last chapter really focused in on a path forward for indoor chemistry was kind of an over the horizon look at where we're going to be with indoor chemistry over the next say five to 10 years. And so within each chapter there's an overview of the current state of the science and research needs. And this report is large enough and several hundred pages long that there's no way that I can give it fair amount of coverage here in the time allotted. So instead what I'll be doing is focusing in on our last chapter in the path forward. So there are some key messages that the committee wants to communicate to everyone. And one of those is that the indoor environment and that the chemistry found indoors is actually quite complex. So indoor chemistry can vary dramatically from building to building. So for example, if we think about a hypothetical home environment. So, within one of our typical homes we have furnishings and we have carpeting and we have other types of building materials that can off gas different chemicals. We as humans contribute some additional chemistry to that indoor environment we ourselves can actually provide some chemistry, but we also use different types of personal care products, or we may have fumes coming from an automobile for example in a garage. So this complex set of chemistries that can occur could vary between say a school and a home and a hospital, where the use of the building vary quite a bit. Another thing that we want to make sure that the public and everyone else is fully aware of is that this complex chemistry leads to some gaps in our knowledge. And so at the end of the day really our researchers we don't always know that much about how humans get exposed to chemicals found in the indoor environment. And we don't always know how these exposures might vary as a chemical changes and partitions between say the air and a surface. Because it's a complex environment we're being exposed to multiple chemicals simultaneously in the indoor environment and so we have chemical chemical interactions as well that are not fully understood. And then we spend most of our majority of our time in an indoor environment there's been some surveys that estimate that people, for example in the United States might spend more than 80% of our lifetime indoors. We're looking at long term health effects from long term exposures to these chemicals within within this home environment and other indoor environments as well. There's a few other things that we've noted in the committee wants to point out that the changes in the outdoor environment are going on and some of these changes are actually quite significant due to climate change, increasing amount of wildfires and increasing urbanization There's going to be impacts between outdoor air in the outdoor environment in the indoor environment. And so that interplay between those two environments, we need to have a better understanding of. And then ultimately our understanding of indoor chemistry really depends upon the ability of chemists and others to actually interrogate look at which chemicals can be found in the indoor environment. And so that oftentimes really requires investments and new analytical chemistry approaches and techniques that will allow us to better understand the chemistry that's occurring in these different environments. This knowledge about indoor chemistry is going to grow over the next 10 years and indeed the last 10 years has seen some really significant increases in our knowledge and we hope that this report fosters additional attention on this issue. And additional investments in the future so assuming that it does have that impact will know more about the indoor chemistry environment 10 years from now than say we do today. And so it's going to be important that we not only gather this information but actually applied in certain ways so we need to translate this knowledge into both practice and policy. So how our homes built or how do we end up ventilating homes or what are the best ways to try to mitigate this chemistry. The other thing is, as a complex environment when I say it's complex. There's hundreds to literally thousands of chemicals that might exist in the indoor environment. And for many of those chemicals we have very little information regarding their toxicity, and we have even less into information regarding how the chemical chemical interactions and this exposure to mixtures might actually impact human health. So in order to mitigate these different chemical hazards that we know potentially exist within the home environment and other indoor environments. We're going to have to look at how do we change building designs and operations, and that we may need to start to consider more. How do we actually minimize the chemistry through the selection of products and materials that are brought into the indoor environment. So those are some global observations that the committee has made and then we've also made a series of very specific recommendations that I'll go through to as well, which are found in the last chapter of our report. And so, following this thread that the chemical complexity in the indoor environment requires additional study, we've made several different recommendations associated with that concept. So for example, researchers should further investigate the complexity and the composition of these mixtures found indoors. And we need to look at a broad range of different types of building stocks so different types of residential environments and other types of buildings. And we need to have a better understanding of how these mixtures that are found indoors could impact chemical exposure and human health. I mentioned these chemicals are not static they can undergo transformations. So chemical transformations that can occur are going to require the application of some advanced analytical chemistry techniques. And we're going to need to have a better understanding of just the fundamental chemical reactions that occur, both within the home environment and other indoor environments. And we may need to have laboratory studies that are more controlled allow us to actually interrogate and investigate this question as well. As I mentioned, chemicals can undergo different phase shifts so they can move from the air to, for example, a surface and so researchers need to prioritize it to improve our understanding of how these phase distribution of indoor chemicals can occur. And then we need to link that information into models that can describe exposure to humans. So how would a human be exposed to the chemical in the air, or how will they be exposed to say chemicals that they come in contact with on a surface environment. This type of work is going to require a multidisciplinary activity it's going to require kind of a fundamental understanding from both toxicologist biologists chemists engineering and others. And so we need to start to have increased multidisciplinary research to try to improve our understanding of this complex indoor environment. Ultimately, what we want to be able to understand is how this indoor chemistry environment changes environmental quality, how it changes exposure to chemicals, and ultimately how it may or may not affect human health. So as I mentioned, we were living in a changing world. I mean, we've got wildfires we have a number of other things that are occurring. And so there's a need for us to have improved understanding of how indoor chemistry could be changing with respect to this changing world. And so we need to understand how indoor exposures can actually occur with changes in the outdoor air environment. So for example, how do wildfires contribute to indoor exposures, and how to say a wildfire event, change transformations that might occur indoors. That's just one of several examples. We also need to create inventories of emission inventories. So we need to start to have a better idea of how the different chemicals get emitted from different products found within the indoor environment. And when we start to collect that information, we can start to have a better understanding of how these emissions might impact both indoor air quality, but they may also impact outdoor air quality as well. And as chemicals found indoors, they are a major source for when they're subsequently found outdoors as well. And then researchers and engineers should try to integrate this information into building system designs and mitigation approaches. And there's a variety of different ways that we can accomplish this. But one of the key things is that we need to have early discussion with indoor air scientists to make this happen. So obviously this is going to require some investments in research. And so there's a number of different types of recommendations that our report points to with respect to these future investments. So for example, federal agencies that fund research need to prioritize work on indoor chemistry and its impact on indoor air quality and public health and indeed the committee is encouraging the federal government and other funders of research to consider this a national priority. So we're going to need to develop some novel methods and human informatic approaches that will allow us to understand and identify these wide classes of chemicals that are found indoors. Both as primary emissions in other words these are the products that are coming off of say a surface in the home environment, but as well as the secondary chemical reaction products. So researchers that are working in the indoor environment and trying to do measurements indoors. They need to develop new analytical approaches that can probe this complexity in both all different phases found indoors. So not only in gases, but in aerosols and on surfaces and the complexity of these types of measurements and the equipment that might be needed could vary depending upon which phase we're looking at. And then, as I mentioned humans we actually contribute to this and a lot of different ways and so, but we don't always understand what people are doing in the home environment. And so we need to have an updated human activity pattern survey. So for example, how much of our time is spent cooking, how much of our time is spent doing other types of activities that might impact indoor chemistry and indoor chemical exposures. Science by itself is clearly important, but we also need to be able to communicate the science and the risks associated with indoor chemistry. And so there's a variety of different ways in which this can occur and right now that's actually one of the things we're hoping through this webinar is to help communicate the science and risks that the committee has identified. And so what we need to try to do is actually work with different practitioners to disseminate research findings into social and mass media. It's one thing to publish research and scientific journals that get read by a small number of people, but it's also important for us to engage more broadly the public as we are today through this webinar. There's concerns about environmental justice. And so different communities are impacted in different ways with respect to indoor chemistry and so we need to consider how these different communities are uniquely impacted. And we need to consider them when we're formulating research priorities and recommendations. So if we're going to be creating indoor air quality standards in the future, they need to be considering the broad set of folks including environmental justice communities. And again this is interdisciplinary research is going to be needed and we need to look at how new products and services might impact indoor chemistry. So that type of information is critical but we also need to link it to different behaviors, for example. So for example, how do sensors. So some of you listening in on this may have home sensors already that might be monitoring things like carbon monoxide. So if you have a home sensor, how does that change your behavior then, and then how does that change in behavior influence indoor chemistry. So we've spent some time in our report discussing different air cleaning products and services and so one of the things we noted is that there's not standardized test methods for many of these air cleaning products and indeed one thing we're concerned about is that there could be false claims regarding the efficacy of some air cleaning products and services. And so one thing that we felt as needed is there's going to be some additional methods being developed to determine whether or not actions on these products and services is actually needed. And so we need to have a better understanding of health impacts from exposures to different chemicals across a range of indoor settings. And this information then could help inform regulators as to whether or not additional standards guidelines or other efforts are needed in order to regulate indoor chemistry. So in closing, we really tried to distill down here in just a few minutes time, the main messages of this report. The committee also would like to thank the sponsors, and the sponsors of the report included the Sloan Foundation, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US National Institute of Environmental Diseases. And I think the closing message as well that we'd like to give you is that similar to our committee being multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. That's where the field is going to need to go we're going to have entered. We have a need for interdisciplinary research in this area in order to advance the field. So that Megan I'll turn it back to you to try to moderate questions. And again, several of us from the committee are more than happy to try to handle any questions that might occur in the Q&A. So Megan. Great. Well, thank you so much for that presentation. Just a reminder to our audience in order to ask a question just use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen type in your question there. You can submit it at any time. So I'll invite the other members of the committee who are joining us here today to turn their cameras on and just a reminder to you all to introduce yourself the first time you start answering questions the audience knows who you are. So I think our first question is for early career researchers just entering the field. What do you think will be most useful for them in your report as they start thinking about kind of where to take their careers and how to fit them into the future of the field. That's a great question I think having, well I'll give you my perspective first is that I think there's a really rich opportunities here for future investigators to study the indoor air environment in the indoor chemistry environment and so I think as people as a place to continue their careers or even start their careers, they should be anticipating that they're going to be interacting with toxicologist chemists engineers. So if they really enjoy kind of being a part of the puzzle, so to speak. I think if they really enjoy being a critical component of a multidisciplinary team, they would find this a very enriching and rewarding career option. But I'll also turn it off to also turn it off to Rima and others of the committee for their perspective as well. Thank you David and I'll just briefly introduce myself Dr Rima Haber I'm an associate professor at the University of Southern California I actually completely agree with David to me. It's about sort of identifying hopefully actionable problems in society that would really impact a human health and learning how to perhaps know how to work in large interdisciplinary teams to really kind of do action oriented research, you know we have amazing professors on to hopefully can chime in with their thoughts. Hi, I'll add in my name is Vicky Grassian I'm currently the chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California San Diego. What I would say is that this report is really rich in terms of learning what the questions are what the challenges are and what the opportunities are. So, I think that any early career scientist or engineer will find, you know, a myriad of different things that could be done in their career to address some of these issues to address these different challenges so I do think the report can be very useful and if I were you I would read the entire report because throughout it it has a number of different recommendations for like next steps and what needs to be done. All right, our next question says, you mentioned regulating indoor air quality, but is that a realistic option. Well, right now you raised your hand so I'll let you take a first crack at that. If you guys don't mind. You know I don't think we in the report we didn't outright say we want to suggest, you know regulating indoor air concentrations or chemical concentrations. We I think contextualize the problem as, you know we need to be thinking about regulating indoor air quality for minimizing exposures and health and other environmental impacts, but the approach can be wronged and we don't have to sort of copy and paste the same rationale and kind of logic that went into the outdoor air quality standards. Exactly to the indoor setting because we recognize things are very different and you can't tell someone perhaps what to do or not in their home but we can do a lot around regulating emissions standards for the products that do get used and regulating materials and furnishing materials, you know regulating how buildings are operated and ventilated, and I'd love to hear my colleagues thoughts as well. Delphine. Yeah, I'm happy to follow up Delphine farmer and professor of chemistry at Colorado State University. And I think this is a really interesting question and I think one of the challenges with it is that the term regulating means a lot of different things. And so I think we can view in the report there are several, several different aspects that are called out one is is that of codes and guidelines so in chapter five where we talk about managing chemicals in the indoor environment. We can discuss the idea of, for example, building codes and ash or a set of guidelines and codes and I think that's one area where a lot of thought has been put into physics and engineering and there's an emerging set of ideas coming out for technology so I think that's one area where we can really start to use chemistry to guide what's actually happening. I think another two other areas where we can think of, perhaps, right, maybe regulation is the right term but guidance and, and to an extent some regulation is that indoor air sensors, which are emerging in usage and I think ensuring that there's a common set of standards for those that's one area, and then that's discussed in the use of those standards is those sensors rather is discussed in the report. Another area is I think discussed in the report is the question of things that can impact indoor air, for example, the use of air cleaners or other chemical modifications indoor environments. The report highlights that there's not a lot of information available on on what the, for example, unintended byproducts or efficacy of those those devices actually are so the report calls out for the need to first develop some testing standards and then once those are developed and and and the systems that are commercially available are better understood than I think there would be room for discussion in the in that's described in this report. Our next question is David mentioned a lack of testing and reporting for air cleaning products, and I think we were just referencing that as well. Is this referring to a lack of equivalence to a h a m c a d r reporting when chemical focused air cleaning is claimed for a product. I can take this yes to report specifically calls out several aspects that are needed for testing of air cleaners. One of those was to understand a clean air delivery rate that's that that CDR cater that was described. I think a couple of other areas that are really needed that are described in the report. One is the is efficacy of removal. So that's a clean air delivery rate so common standards for that are described report. And then byproduct formation and how to test for that and that's that's a real challenge. Thank you. Our next question says in the section on management of chemicals and indoor environments, the report states that quote every management approach has different chemical consequences. For example, approaches that include oxidation are particularly prone to generating products of concern. And can the committee comment more on approaches that include oxidation. Can you give some common examples and are there some important actions to mitigate exposures that you can highlight. I can take this one as well so the report and I think maybe Vicki can hop in as well the report really describes. There are quite a few common approaches. In terms of chemical approaches, there are products available to add ozone or hydroxyl radicals to indoor environments there are also devices that are release hydrogen peroxide or hypochloric acid into indoor environments. So the report and the committee really discussed those sorts of devices in terms of oxidation and chemistry. And this question really asks are there some important actions to mitigate exposures. I think, I think there are a lot of open questions that are described in this report in terms of how well those systems work, what unintended consequences happen and so the report really highlights the need for more research in that area. And the report synthesizes information from a few different sources and provides some evidence that this is certainly a concern. But I think there are, there are some key recommendations and maybe Vicki could discuss some of those, those ideas. Thank you, Delphine. What I would say is there's the chemical you want to remove. So that's the, what you would like to have happen and then when you have these additive chemicals and Delphine just mentioned ozone hydroxyl radical. You have to remember that also has some consequences. And then there's the chemistry between the ozone hydroxyl radical with this chemical that you want to remove. And so what are those products, what are, what is that chemistry that's going on. And oftentimes that is not spelled out very clearly, or it's not well understood. And so that is what the report was trying to convey is there's more information needed on these different types of approaches. That are currently not being done. And so we made a number of recommendations in that regard. There's also even photo catalytic oxidation on surfaces was discussed in the report. Again, what is the starting reactant and then what are the products, what are some intermediates that may form in the middle, that we need to be thinking about so that's what the report discussed in some detail and I believe that was the next question. Thank you, Dr. Five. Thank you. Great. Thank you both. Our next question is, did you personally change anything you do in your own home based on your participation in developing this report. I think a lot of us will never cook again without turning our fans on. I think one thing that all of us in, in, in this, this group would say is definitely one thing that we've done. Also the whole idea of outdoor indoor air exchange and ventilation I think is and is something that we all think about as well. I don't know, did you want to say something more Dave. So I think one thing we all probably do to is just had a better understanding of how complex the environment really is. I think that's, and how little is known. So maybe it didn't lead to actionable changes per se and some of our home environments but I think it just increased our awareness of the importance of this report and its contribution to our knowledge base. I get my dog bass more often now because it's less stinky. My next question is in a similar vein. I'm a physician and nothing about the health impacts of indoor chemistry was taught to me in med school. Why is this issue neglected. Yeah, maybe I'll take a crack at that one because as a veterinarian I can say the same thing. You know indoor air quality from a medicine perspective oftentimes gets ignored but it's even more broadly than that it's not just indoor chemistry it's an environmental health gets under taught in many ways in most medical school environments and so I think that one of the things that we don't do is put enough pressure on administrators of educational programs to try to broaden that type of education it's not covered in the reports and just be aware of that I'm kind of just talking outside of the report itself but I think that's really the impediment is just trying to get folks to become more aware of environmental health issues has been changed across all medical fields for training of people. Anyone else want to add anything about why they think this issue might be under taught or neglected. I'd like to add some thoughts but just a preference this is saying this is not in the report and just my personal opinion from my experience I think, you know in medical kind of curricula there's a focus on treatment right on kind of a problem and seeing what you can do about it and a lot of the time with environmental exposures. It's really these upstream factors that we need to be thinking about and the prevention side of things. And so I would say, you know, for example in the field of pediatric asthma there is a lot of interest in work and perhaps teaching around how indoor allergens and chemicals and air pollution. It's not just asthma but that's because that particular disease is so heavily influenced by these environmental factors and perhaps there's been more knowledge around those direct effects but a lot of the things we think about, you know in this field are way upstream and sometimes they act indirectly so it can be a little bit harder to also tell one particular individual or person, you know what you can do about your environment or your neighbor, right that's a little bit of a more challenging conversation. And I'd like to add one more thing because I think it is highlighted in the report is that the field of indoor chemistry is quite new, and I think that's, and, and a lot of the report draws on the history of outdoor atmospheric chemistry and uses some of that that knowledge and puts it into the context of indoor environments, and I think that that highlights one of the challenges and the indoor chemistry has not been as well, it's not been as well funded it's not as mature a field as some other areas and the opportunities I think and this is again a personal opinion is that I think some of those, some of the lack of knowledge has had a harder timing translated into curricula and I think that's a, I think we're now at a point and I think that report really highlights the current state of knowledge so I, I hope that perhaps now is a good time for that to change. And I just want to add that I think it's a new dawn, if you will, in terms of, you know, thinking about indoor air chemistry indoor air quality, especially as it relates to the pandemic. And now people starting to have CO2 monitors and thinking about things like ventilation and filtration. So, we're hoping that this report really is a springboard to widening people's understanding of what the challenges what the opportunities are in terms of learning more about this important field so I think that's the hope of a lot of the committee members. Thank you all. So, Rima mentioned asthma, and I think that's a good lead into this next question, which is, what does the committee think are the hook issues that will get the public engaged in pushing for this research. And the person asked the question said for example asthma. So are there any others that you think, you know, could be used as a hook for public engagement. And guys, I'll just add I think and Vicki was just saying this right I think the pandemic has really shed into light sort of how important the indoor environment is, and how actions and decisions we take about how we kind of manage our indoor and our indoor kind of environmental quality in general, you know, affect all our health, not just, you know, pandemic and disease transmission risk, asthma but also, you know, mental health and stress levels and productivity and focus and so on and and so forth and I don't I mean I think getting into those health effects in detail was beyond the scope of our task for this report right but I feel like, exactly as Vicki was saying this is a very different time in terms of public awareness about the importance of the indoor environment. And that's at least one thing that comes to mind I don't know if you guys would like to add anything. I would add I think that's exactly right I think the concern over airborne pathogens has certainly highlighted a lot of interest in indoor chemistry and an indoor air and I think the one other issue that is warrants consideration that's out of school children. And there's a lot of evidence already in the literature showing that air quality impacts health and asthma is one excellent example of that but there are others and I, and I think that the issue of school air is one that is is is a growing concern and interest. Yeah thanks for those additional examples and discussion. I think another hook that we shouldn't forget is just the amount of time we spend indoors that just that really when we think about the amount of effort for say regulating outdoor air where we spend a small fraction of your time outdoors, compared to the indoor environment I mean I think again that's another hook that we just need to consider is what are we missing by not considering it. Thank you. As public health practitioners and scientists, we don't often get to have a seat at the table with legislators and funders who can make indoor chemistry part of redesign or new design and buildings. This report will help give legitimacy to our cause but do you have any ideas how to make these things happen. Yeah, so I think academies plays a really critical role in this activity, because penultimately what academies is designed to do is try to give advice to the federal government and other agencies. There are a lot of sponsors, for example Sloan Foundation CDC EPA and then IHS, you know they're, they wanted this report they engage the Academy to have this report developed. And I think that allows you to get a seat at the table in many ways this report really is going to be at the table as discussions are being made within organizations like NIH EPA for future research funding. And then I think that's really in the short term that's where I see our impact actually occurring is with our sponsors. And then I think more broadly is people are more aware of this as an issue, you start to have others, for example regulators or legislators start to ask the question, what, what do we need to do. And so I think this can serve as a catalyst for those types of activities. And I'd like to highlight that in the last chapter of the report we very specifically call out some of the communication issues, and one of our strong recommendations that's highlighted is that researchers should proactively engage in links that connect research application for the indoor chemistry research process, and, and that includes communication with stakeholders including the public but also also other agencies and I think that that aspect is something that's really important and has not been as emphasized in our field to the state. Great, thank you all. Our next question is, in light of the new environmental changes, for example wildfires, can we continue to depend on fresh air ventilation as the main method of indoor air quality improvement. Perhaps I can. I was just going to say that's a very, that's a great question and that's something we talked about actually quite a bit, especially as it relates to that last chapter chapter seven a path forward, where we talk about the outdoor indoor air change. And if the outdoor air is not fresh, then you don't want to open your windows you don't want to do anything in that regard so it would mostly be related to filtration and, and removal that way. So that was a key point that we did discuss and like I said in chapter seven we talk a lot about that outdoor indoor exchange, especially when it's related to the outdoor environment, being problematic due to things like wildfires. Rima you wanted to say add in. Exactly, exactly as you just said I think, you know, another thing the pandemic has sort of highlighted, or just recent times is that these things tend to occur together at the same time. You know we can't always sort of think of one problem at a time to try to mitigate it so the wildfires context plus pandemic plus other usual indoor air quality concerns. So that's why our recommendations are to just think of these things together, you know, and, and sometimes the one solution is not the best solution, you know, given the context. Do you want to add something. Yeah, I did want to add that there's a large amount of literature that backs up the use of air cleaners and about pepper filters or other filtration devices and I think that that's one area that the report highlighted it's something where there's established a very well established technology and, and, and so that there and there are a few areas. A few other other approaches but balancing ventilation filtration and other approaches definitely needs to occur when you're in polluted environments and urban air pollution and smog was another, another sort of example of that. So I think, I think that they're definitely alternative approaches. One thing our report also covers is that this is also an important environmental justice issue, because for many communities, those types of technologies are just not available. And so for many communities they rely almost solely on outdoor ventilation is a way to try to improve indoor air quality so we just, we can't forget that as well. Yeah, thank you for doing that Dave and thank you all. And our next question says, as Dave Dorman mentioned indoor air is very complex many sources and transformations, but standards and regulations need to be simple and reliable. How far are we from knowing what needs to be controlled and what levels to achieve goals for health and productivity. What will it take to close the gap. So I can take a first stab at that question I think this is a fantastic question right how much do we know enough to be able to start thinking about standards and regulations and I, and I think what this report highlights is that there are certain areas or we certainly do know a lot we do understand a lot about particle emissions we have very very strong evidence of health effects and from those particle emissions, and, and we have some very simple ways and effective ways to to remove particles from some areas where that are ripe and ready for consideration and standards and regulations I think there are other areas and a lot of the more complex chemistry that that is discussed in the report certainly are not there yet and that's where those recommendations for more funding or more research really is it's a need to research these sort of interdisciplinary connections between for example building materials and the chemistry that occurs on surfaces and impacts air. So those areas really need a stronger understanding before, before, I think before we're ready for for discussing standards or regulations, but I suspect Vicki and Rima and Dave will have more thoughts. Yeah I'll just add in that. In chapters three and chapters four in particular in the report we talk about this concept of partitioning that Dave spoke about. You have a something a chemical in the gas phase but then it goes to a surface. It stays in the surface but it could also come back out into the gas phase, it could go on to the surface it can undergo a transformation come back off as a different chemical. So some of the things that we really feel in the report and discussed in detail that we know little about that we need to understand some of these concepts a little bit better, that is, where they're distributed. So are these chemicals indoors, is it in the air, should we be worrying about that is it on surfaces. Are these chemicals and particles, as Delphine was just talking about particles, and also importantly, do they undergo chemical transformations. Once they undergo transformations there are different chemical. Now what does that chemical do, does it stay in the air, does it go to the surface, is it part of a particle. So those details are the ones that we feel are more information is needed, so we can then understand things related to exposure better so I just wanted to add in that some of the research needs that we discuss in the report. Yes, and I would also like to add to my colleague's points is that we do know a lot about the importance of you know the inhalation, ingestion dermal uptake pathways, they're heavily dominated, or that the indoor environment significantly to just because of how much time we spend indoors and the behaviors that we do indoors especially if you're thinking about kids for example, and we do know a lot about the adverse health effects of flame retardants, you know endocrine conducting chemicals, phthalates, other chemicals that we know are heavily present in indoor products in building materials, etc. We do have challenges that we really point out to in the report that Dr. Heather Stapleton, you know, kind of really emphasize is that for a lot of these chemicals we know there's tens of thousands of chemicals in the indoor space, we know very little about a very small fraction of them so many of them, you know, we don't have enough toxicological data on and that is a huge data gap that we point you in the report, but we also are having these untargeted kind of discovery based analytical methods that are allowing us to detect things that we weren't aware perhaps are there before and we need to be able to identify those to study their kind of exposure and health implications. I would kind of argue or say that there's a lot we do know about the importance of exposure and health implications of the indoor environment but we've been a little hampered with the lack of data availability or perhaps transparency on what's going into all these products and what are their exact sort of toxicological profiles, especially as chemicals have long lifetimes for some of them, right, and they get recycled back into other products etc. And so, you know, I think we have a call for action on a lot of these points in the report. Thank you all. Reba, I think you started addressing this in your answer already, but did you find that in one that one indoor air pollutant was most impactful in the home in your report, for example cooking versus flavored hardens versus dust versus burning candles what does the report have to say on on these specific pollutants. I would say that the report did not highlight one particular chemical and that is important for us to perhaps describe more clearly is, you know, the main point is that the indoor chemical environment is highly complex and highly diverse. There is a lot of sources and reservoirs that we know about that emits particular chemicals and exactly as Vicki was describing, there's a lot of transformation that happens in that we might not know a lot about the kind of consequences of from exposure and health so you know I would bring it back to we know that the indoor environment itself, whether through inhalation or dermal or ingestion pathways contributes a lot to all of our chemical exposures. But I would try to kind of discourage people from focusing in on just one chemical, and instead thinking of mixtures that were exposed to indoors because we have substantial evidence to know, you know, to be concerned in that perspective, I would say. Do you guys agree with that would you like to add anything. Yeah, I think that's that spot on, and I would also like to add that the committee discussed extensively the company, it's not just that there are chemicals that are brought into the indoor environment, but there's a lot of actual reactions and transformations occurring in the indoor environment, and so that creates and destroys simultaneously a lot of different compounds and that adds to this incredible complexity. And so I think that it's clear from the report from the committee discussions that the field of the science is not necessarily at a point where we can, we can point to an individual compound as being the single most important thing and of course, as we highlight in the report there are different in different types of indoor environments I mean not only is your kitchen different from your bathroom but your house is different from another house and from a school and from an office building and so this this complexity is is a real challenge so the field and I and I think that's that makes it hard to find a single compound to try and try and remove but we also highlight that there are sweets of compounds that work in similar ways. I think trying to find consistent types of chemicals that undergo similar transformations and targeting those is one very promising way of approaching mitigation in terms of thinking about improving indoor air. Thank you and I'm sure a few other comments that. No, I agree with a lot of what you and Rima just said, but you know some of the different examples you gave some, you know the candle burning related to particle emission there's, there's different aspects to all the different examples that were just mentioned and again as they already indicated it's the complexity of the different the synergisms that occur in the indoor environment between a number of different chemicals types of particles that really need to be further considered and that was discussed in that last chapter that David overview for us. Okay, thank you all. It looks like we have time for probably two more questions. Children might need some exposure to biologicals to form an immune system and resistance. Can you ever have indoor air that is too clean. Yeah, I was, I'd like to start out by saying one of the challenges with indoor air and it's one that's highlighted in this report is that a building a room or a building an indoor space is enclosed by some sort of material and all of these materials release and take up and continuously interact with indoor air. So, the nature of indoor areas that it's impossible to have it, you know, removed of any chemical, chemical components other than say nitrogen and oxygen and argon. But instead we have all of these trace gases. And so I think that one thing that the report really highlights is that it's just that complexity. So I tend to understand that then then there's this challenge of whether or not these compounds that are coming from building materials, even if you didn't do any cooking or cleaning with any sort of strong chemical product. Even then you would still have a large number of compounds in the air that you're breathing and the toxicity of those is of course a different question and not one that I think we're ready to answer yet. I think it's currently, I don't, I don't think we could say, I don't think you could have an indoor environment that's completely clean, just by the definitions of the materials that we use to build those indoor environment. But I think there is, I think that there's also of course this question of bringing outdoor pollution in generating pollution inside I think it's, I think the nature of human activities is such that it would be very, very hard to have an environment that is so clean that that would, that would be, you know, even warrant consideration versus remote outdoor atmosphere air. So, you know, air in over the middle of the ocean or up in the Arctic, it's very clean. That air is just so different as orders of magnitude different in terms of the number of chemical species and the concentrations of those species from indoor air in general. I mean unless you're in a, in a clean room setting, perhaps it's highly highly managed. So I think it's hard to imagine that that scenario but it's a lovely thought experiment. Rima or Vicki or Dave. I think one, maybe we're running out of time but it's also important for us to leave a mess, maybe a different message to it that I don't want the public listening in, walking away from this completely concerned about their indoor chemistry and their indoor home environments or where they work and, you know, so the report raises research needs and scientific gaps in our knowledge, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone listening in is at some great risk. You know, so, ultimately what we have to do is have a better understanding of what's occurring in the indoor environment, and then be able to try to mitigate it as needed or make correct event steps but, you know, ultimately we're, we're going to be into a complex environment, no matter, you know, that's that's the reality of life in many ways and so what I think the reports just trying to say is these gaps of knowledge lead us maybe to not be able to give those complete answers that people want today. And so I think that's maybe an important take home message as well. Yeah, thank you all. And we do have we're like right about at time but I just want to give the committee an opportunity or there any last takeaway messages that you want to make sure readers have in their mind as they as they dive into your report over the next couple of weeks. Maybe I would just add exactly what David was saying is that you know the word chemical does not imply is not equate risk and so we're just saying, we need more data, especially on some very kind of limited areas that we haven't known a lot about to really be able to understand exposure and health risks. And from this we hope there are best practices for people as we start to dive into the research and we start to figure out some of these different questions and the challenges and so that's that's ultimately what we would like to have some guidelines best practices for people to follow so that the public can be assured that they're in a healthy environment. And I think one last note on that is that the committee really noted and and I think we really learned the importance of using multiple disciplines to really think about this problem so this isn't a problem that anyone in the public should just listen to chemists or just listen to building scientists or just listen to toxicologists on this is really improving indoor air really requires many disciplines and many different ideas to come together. Well, thank you all so much for those closing notes. Unfortunately, we are out of time for questions. Thank you to our audience for submitting so many wonderful questions and sorry we didn't have time to tackle all of them. Once you exit this webinar you'll be redirected to our report page where you can download the report for free and in full. So with that I'd just like to thank our speakers again and thank you all for participating with us today. Thank you.