Air pollution is a global threat with an estimated 7 million people dying prematurely from exposure to both indoor and outdoor air pollution every year. The nascent research area of indoor air pollution is particularly important to quantifying total exposure to air pollution, as the average person spends more than 90% of their time indoors. Modern buildings are considered particularly problematic because of the use of more energy-efficient construction, poorly designed heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and space design.

This project will generate an extensive database (1500-2500 monitoring days covering 10-15 commercial buildings and 30-50 residential buildings) of indoor air pollutants using state-of-the-art automatic sampling equipment. This provides real-time measurements of all pollutants that have been defined as potential health risks including ultrafine particles, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon dioxide. The resulting database will provide significant insight into indoor levels of air pollution and their likely sources and supplement current understanding of associated adverse health effects. The database will be augmented with data on the characteristics of individual buildings and used to generate models to assist building design under the constraint of good indoor air quality.