Air Quality Matters

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and One Take, where we unpack the latest research shaping our understanding of indoor air and the built environment.

This week, we're diving into one of the most complex and urgent environmental dilemmas of our time: the smoke from fires we set on purpose.

The paper, Associations between PM2.5 from Prescribed Burning and Emergency Department Visits in 11 Southeastern US States by a team of researchers from Boston University, Georgia Tech, and other institutions, tackles a critical question: In our effort to prevent catastrophic wildfires through prescribed burning, are we creating a different, more chronic health problem from the smoke of these "good fires"?

The Environmental Dilemma:

Prescribed burning—intentionally setting smaller, controlled fires to clear underbrush—is one of our primary tools to fight the catastrophic wildfires made worse by climate change. But this tool has side effects: smoke containing fine particulate matter (PM2.5). The question is whether we're trading one health disaster for another.

The Study:

Researchers analyzed over 30 million emergency department visits from 11 southeastern US states over nearly a decade—a region where prescribed burning is common practice. Using sophisticated chemical transport models, they "tagged" PM2.5 in the air to identify which portions came specifically from prescribed fires, allowing them to isolate the health signal of just these controlled burns.

The Surprising Findings:

Yes, there is a link. On days with high levels of PM2.5 from prescribed fires, there was a statistically significant increase in emergency department visits for upper respiratory infections and, most notably, ischemic heart disease, which went up by about 6%.

But here's the counter-intuitive part: For the classic signatures of smoke exposure—overall respiratory admissions, asthma, and COPD—they didn't find a statistically significant increase. This is what makes smoke from prescribed fires different from wildfire smoke.

Why the Difference?

The nature of the fires themselves. Wildfires are hot, intense, and chaotic, burning everything from the forest floor to the canopy. Prescribed burns are cooler and slower, designed to smolder through underbrush, grass, and leaf litter. This difference in what's burning and how it's burning creates a different chemical cocktail of smoke. Prescribed fire smoke tends to have lower concentrations of pollutants like carbon monoxide and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) compared to wildfire smoke.

The Big Takeaway:

Not all smoke is created equal. The health impact of PM2.5 is not just about the mass of particles in the air—it's about what those particles are made of, and it depends profoundly on the source.

This research doesn't give us an easy answer. It doesn't say prescribed burning is safe or unsafe. Instead, it gives us a much more nuanced picture. It's a powerful reminder that there are no easy wins in environmental management—it's all a game of trade-offs. We're using a tool to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, but that tool has its own health risks, and those risks are different.

This kind of research is absolutely vital for land managers and public health officials because it helps them understand the specific health impacts of their decisions, allowing for more targeted warnings and a better, more honest conversation about the risks we're actually choosing to manage.

Associations between PM2.5 from prescribed burning and emergency department visits in 11 Southeastern US states

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2025.109770

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website

• 00:00:00 Introduction: The Prescribed Burning Paradox
• 00:01:48 The Study Design: Tagging Smoke from Good Fires
• 00:02:54 The Findings: A Surprising Health Signal
• 00:04:02 Not All Smoke is Equal: The Chemistry Matters
• 00:05:32 The Big Takeaway: Environmental Trade-Offs and Honest Conversations
• 00:06:40 Closing: Thanks and Next Week

In this essential episode, we sit down with Paul O'Sullivan, lecturer in Sustainable Energy Engineering at MTU and co-lead of the MESO Research Group, to explore one of the most pressing—yet often overlooked—challenges in our built environment: how do we design buildings that don't overheat?

Paul brings deep expertise in low-energy demand-side technologies, building retrofit strategies, indoor thermal environments, and ventilative cooling. His work sits at the fascinating intersection of thermal comfort, air quality, decarbonization, and the future resilience of our homes, schools, and workplaces.

The Central Question

We've spent decades designing buildings to be thermally comfortable in winter—airtight, well-insulated, energy-efficient. But in doing so, have we created a new problem? As our climate warms and our buildings become better at keeping heat in, how do we ensure they can also let heat out when they need to—without resorting to energy-intensive air conditioning?

Key Topics Discussed:

• Thermal Comfort vs. Overheating: What's the difference between discomfort and a genuine health risk? Why overheating is not just about temperature, but about duration, vulnerability, and the capacity of a building to respond.
• The Unintended Consequences of Energy Efficiency: How our drive to decarbonize heating has created buildings that struggle to cool—and why Ireland's cooling season now starts in March.
• The Cooling Ladder: A design philosophy for tackling overheating—starting with prevention (solar shading, orientation), then modulation (thermal mass, phase-change materials), then dissipation (ventilative cooling), and only finally, supplementary mechanical cooling.
• Ventilative Cooling and the New CEN Technical Specification: How natural and mechanical ventilation can provide free, sustainable cooling—and why the European standard Paul helped develop is a game-changer for designers.
• The Performance Gap: Why buildings that look great on paper often overheat in reality—and why simulation tools are struggling to keep pace with the rate of climate change and building innovation.
• Agency and Adaptation: The power of openable windows, external shutters, and giving occupants control. Why buildings that allow people to adapt perform better—and why we've lost some of that agency in modern construction.

This is a conversation about trade-offs, resilience, and the path forward. It's about recognizing that comfort isn't a luxury—it's a fundamental aspect of health, well-being, and productivity. And it's about designing buildings that work with their climate, not against it.

DESCRIPTION:

HOST:

Simon Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-air-quality-matters/

GUEST:

 Paul O’Sullivan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-d-o-sullivan-441b9023/

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with

Zehnder Group -  Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect - 

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website.

If you haven't checked out the YouTube channel its here. Do subscribe if you can, lots more content is coming soon.

• 00:00:00 Introduction: Paul O'Sullivan and the Science of Thermal Comfort
• 00:02:18 Thermal Comfort vs Air Quality: Different Lenses on Indoor Environment
• 00:04:07 Maslow's Hierarchy: Is Comfort a Luxury or a Necessity?
• 00:05:34 The Decarbonization Dilemma: Energy Efficiency vs Thermal Comfort
• 00:09:31 Expectation and Adaptation: The Psychology of Thermal Experience
• 00:14:29 The Cooling Ladder: A Design Philosophy for Passive Solutions
• 00:15:44 Where Are We With the Science? Progress and Gaps in Thermal Comfort
• 00:24:07 Defining Overheating: From Discomfort to Health Risk
• 00:24:15 The Measurement Challenge: 20 Different Ways to Assess Overheating
• 00:27:52 Conditioned vs Free-Floating: Two Different Overheating Problems
• 00:37:09 Ireland's Paradox: Overheating in a Cool Climate
• 00:37:16 The Building as Battery: Thermal Mass and Night Cooling Strategies
• 00:52:55 The Performance Gap: Why Simulations Don't Match Reality
• 01:00:40 The Data Desert: Why We Don't Know How Our Buildings Perform
• 01:20:50 Behavior and Technology: The Human Element in Building Performance
• 00:49:07 Ventilation's Role: Free Cooling Potential and Air Quality Trade-offs
• 00:56:08 Heat Recovery Dilemma: Winter Efficiency vs Summer Cooling Needs
• 01:10:20 Hybrid Solutions: The Future of Resilient Cooling
• 01:40:55 Climate Shelters: Schools as Community Heat Wave Refuges
• 01:43:36 Double Jeopardy: When Heat Waves Meet Power Outages and Poor Air Quality
• 01:26:51 The MESO Research Group: From Ventilative Cooling to Citizen Science
• 01:29:44 Window Aerodynamics: The Forgotten Performance Metric
• 01:34:55 European Standards: Translating Research into Design Tools
• 01:48:26 Citizen Science: Engaging Occupants in Building Performance Research
• 01:51:30 The Path Forward: Data, Standards, and Human-Centered Design

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and One Take, where we unpack the latest research shaping our understanding of indoor air and the built environment.

This week, we're diving into a paper that tackles a question millions of us have been living with since the pandemic: What actually makes a good home office?

The study is titled Home as an Office: Investigating the Associations Between Indoor Environmental Quality, Wellbeing and Performance in Work From Home Settings, and it explores a fascinating tension—between what sensors objectively measure and what people subjectively experience.

The Setup:

Researchers recruited 95 people working from home in Vancouver and Seattle and used a clever two-pronged approach. On one hand, participants were given desktop monitors that objectively measured PM2.5, total VOCs, CO₂, temperature, humidity, and sound levels—the hard numbers on the physical environment. On the other hand, they conducted detailed questionnaires asking people about their perceptions: Are you satisfied with the lighting? Do you have an ergonomic chair? Does noise from family interrupt you? They also measured outcomes using standardized surveys for psychological wellbeing, physical symptoms, and work performance.

The Core Question:

Which is the better predictor of wellbeing and productivity—the objective data from the sensors, or the subjective feelings of the occupants?

The Surprising Finding:

The data from the objective sensors—the actual measured levels of PM2.5, CO₂, and so on—showed predominantly weaker associations with how people felt or how productive they were. Even if CO₂ levels were a bit high or PM2.5 was slightly elevated, in this study it didn't have a strong direct link to reported wellbeing or performance.

Why? The authors suggest that indoor environmental quality in most homes was generally moderate, but more importantly, people have agency at home. If you're cold, you can change the thermostat. If the air feels stuffy, you can open a window. This ability to control and adapt seems to weaken the direct link between what a sensor measures and how people actually feel.

The Perception-Based Data Tells a Different Story:

When researchers looked at subjective perception, they found much stronger connections. Satisfaction with ergonomic furniture, good daylight, and a pleasant workspace aesthetic were all strongly linked to positive wellbeing and performance outcomes. People who felt good about their physical setup felt better and worked better.

The reverse was also true. Problems like unwanted interruptions from family, noise from the street, or even persistent kitchen odors were strongly associated with lower psychological wellbeing, reduced vitality, and depressed mood.

The Big Takeaway:

The paper's core message is not that objective indoor air quality doesn't matter—of course it does, especially at extreme levels. But in the context of working from home, our subjective experience of the space is a much better predictor of our wellbeing and performance than what a sensor might tell us.

Perception really is reality here. The feeling of being in control, having a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing space, and not being constantly interrupted—these are not just fluffy nice-to-haves. The study shows they have measurable, statistically significant associations with our mental health and productivity.

The Implications:

This challenges a purely engineering-led, sensor-driven approach to creating healthy buildings. It tells us we can't just focus on hitting certain parts per million. We need a more holistic, human-centered approach. When we design spaces for home working—or frankly, any space—we need to think just as much about ergonomics, acoustics, privacy, and personal control as we do about ventilation rates.

Home as an office: Investigating the associations between indoor environmental quality, well-being, and performance in work-from-home settings

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113310

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website

• 00:00:00 Introduction: The Home Office Question We've All Been Asking
• 00:01:35 The Study Design: Measuring Both Objective and Subjective Reality
• 00:02:55 The Surprising Finding: Sensors Don't Tell the Whole Story
• 00:03:32 The Agency Factor: Why Home is Different from the Office
• 00:04:05 Perception is Reality: The Power of Subjective Experience
• 00:04:41 The Problems That Matter: Interruptions, Noise, and Kitchen Odors
• 00:05:07 The Big Takeaway: Beyond Parts Per Million
• 00:05:53 Implications: A Human-Centered Approach to Indoor Spaces
• 00:06:40 The Validation: Your Uncomfortable Chair Really Does Matter
• 00:07:07 Closing: Thanks and Next Week

In this episode, we sit down with Bart Cremers, Group Knowledge Consultant at Zehnder Group International, to explore one of the most critical—yet often overlooked—challenges in advancing indoor air quality: how industry and academia can collaborate more effectively.

Bart occupies a fascinating position, straddling the worlds of industry and research, product innovation and scientific rigour. With deep expertise in physics, renewable energy, data analysis, and business development, he has spent years translating fundamental science into real-world ventilation solutions—and feeding real-world performance data back into the research community.

The Central Question:

We already have the tools and knowledge to deliver clean, healthy indoor air. So why is there still such a persistent gap between what we know works in the lab and what actually happens in people's homes? And how can we unlock the enormous potential that exists when industry and academia work together properly?

Key Topics Discussed:

• The Two Silos: Why industry and academia often work on the same problems but from fundamentally different perspectives—and why bridging that gap is essential for progress.
• What Industry Brings to Research: Real-world performance data, field monitoring at scale, the ability to tell stories rather than just specs, and the crucial feedback loop between lab performance and lived experience.
• What Academia Brings to Industry: Scientific rigour, peer review, freedom to explore problems without immediate commercial pressure, and the discipline to ask—and answer—the right questions.
• The Speed Problem: Why academic research can take five or six years from conception to publication—and by that time, the technology being studied is often two generations out of date.
• The Performance Gap: Why so much academic research ends up measuring poorly installed or maintained ventilation systems—and what that means for our understanding of what good ventilation can actually achieve.
• Models vs. Reality: The critical importance of validating simulations and models with real-world data—and how industry can provide the field measurements academia desperately needs.
• The Minimum Becomes the Maximum: How regulations and standards, by nature, lag behind innovation—and why designing to minimum compliance is a race to the bottom that leaves everyone worse off.
• The Future: Ventilation as a Service: Why the shift from selling products to selling clean air and healthy outcomes could fundamentally transform the industry—and close the performance gap for good.
• Multifunctional Systems: The promise and peril of integrating ventilation with heating, cooling, and other building systems—and why we need to get the basics right first.
• Retrofit and Renovation: Why the next frontier isn't just new build, but bringing healthy indoor air to the billions of existing buildings—and why that requires a completely different approach.
• Citizen Science: The untapped potential of involving real people in real homes in the research process—not just as data sources, but as co-creators of the questions we need to answer.

This is a conversation about friction, opportunity, and the path forward. It's about recognizing that both industry and academia have blind spots—and that the only way to truly advance indoor air quality is to work together, with mutual respect, shared goals, and a willingness to learn from each other's strengths.

HOST:

Simon Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-air-quality-matters/

GUEST:

Bart Cremers: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bart-kremers/

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with

Zehnder Group - Farmwood - Eurovent - Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website.

If you haven't checked out the YouTube channel its here. Do subscribe if you can, lots more content is coming soon.

• 00:00:00 Introduction: Bridging Industry and Academia in Air Quality
• 00:03:17 The Two Worlds: Understanding Industry and Academic Perspectives
• 00:07:05 The Friction and Opportunity: Why Collaboration is Challenging
• 00:13:48 Real World vs Lab: The Performance Gap Problem
• 00:16:00 Communication Challenges: Telling Stories vs Presenting Specs
• 00:25:14 The Speed Problem: When Research Can't Keep Up with Innovation
• 00:33:26 The Value Exchange: What Industry Brings to Research
• 01:00:01 The Installation Crisis: Measuring Poorly Installed Systems
• 01:04:35 The Minimum Becomes the Maximum: Engineering for Redundancy
• 01:09:08 Closing the Gap: Training, Education, and Consumer Protection
• 01:15:31 The Future: Renovation, Smart Controls, and Ventilation as a Service
• 01:31:40 Multifunctional Systems: The Promise and Complexity of Integration
• 01:42:52 Closing Thoughts: Building for People in a Complex Future

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and One Take, where we unpack the latest research shaping our understanding of indoor air and the built environment.

This week, we're at a paper that tackles a fundamental question: Where exactly should we put indoor air quality sensors? How many do we actually need? And how often should they take readings?

The paper is titled Long-term Indoor Air Quality Monitoring in Office Buildings: Data-Driven and Goal-Oriented Recommendations for Sensor Replacement and Sampling Frequency, and it's all about moving from guesswork to evidence-based monitoring strategies.

The Problem:

Existing standards are all over the place. One might say you need a sensor every 50 square meters, another says 325 is fine. One says sample every 15 minutes, another says 30 is okay. There's a real lack of clear, evidence-based guidance—and if you get it wrong, you're either spending a fortune on equipment you don't need, or you're collecting data that's useless or actively misleading.

The Study:

Researchers installed 16 sensors across three office sites in Shanghai and collected four years of data on PM2.5, PM10, and CO₂—taking readings every single minute. They then analyzed the spatial and temporal patterns to answer the critical questions: Does a sensor over here tell the same story as one over there? And what information do you lose if you sample every hour instead of every minute?

Key Findings:

Particulate Matter (PM2.5 & PM10): The dominant driver is outdoor air. Indoor PM levels tracked outdoor levels very closely, meaning infiltration is the key factor. For tracking general trends, you don't need a massive density of sensors—readings from different locations were highly correlated.

CO₂: A Completely Different Story: CO₂ is generated indoors by occupants, and the study found huge differences depending on sensor location. Key factors included the type of HVAC system, room size, distance from windows, and proximity to air outlets. A single sensor in a large, complex office space just won't cut it.

The Goal-Oriented Approach:

Here's where the paper gets clever. The authors argue that we're often trying to do two different jobs with monitoring, and we need to separate them:

Job #1 - Temporal Trend Monitoring: Understanding the big picture—daily cycles, seasonal changes, overall average conditions. For this, you can use about one sensor every 150 square meters, and sampling intervals of 90 minutes for PM and 130 minutes for CO₂ are sufficient without losing accuracy. This means less data to store, less energy use, and less maintenance.

Job #2 - High Concentration Event Monitoring: Catching the bad stuff—short, sharp spikes in pollution when a meeting room fills up or outdoor smoke floods in. For this, you need much more frequent sampling: every 4 minutes for PM2.5 and CO₂, and every 15 minutes for PM10. You also need more sensors placed strategically in high-risk zones—large rooms, spaces with standalone AC units, and areas far from ventilation sources.

The Big Takeaway:

There's no single "right" way to monitor indoor air quality—it all depends on your goal. This paper gives us a data-driven framework for making that choice. If you want to understand long-term building performance, you can use a sparse network sampling infrequently. But if your primary goal is health and safety—protecting occupants from pollution peaks—you need a denser, targeted network sampling much more often.

This is about being deliberate. It's about monitoring with purpose.

Long-term indoor air quality monitoring in office buildings: Data-driven and goal-oriented recommendations for sensor placement and sampling frequency

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113392

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website

• 00:00:00 Introduction: The Fundamental Questions of Air Quality Monitoring
• 00:01:35 The Problem: Inconsistent Standards and Guidance Gaps
• 00:02:02 The Study Design: Four Years of Data from Shanghai Offices
• 00:02:38 Particulate Matter Findings: Outdoor Air Drives Indoor Trends
• 00:03:14 CO2 Findings: The Complexity of Indoor-Generated Pollutants
• 00:03:47 The Goal-Oriented Approach: Two Different Monitoring Jobs
• 00:04:37 Trend Monitoring: Less is More for General Performance
• 00:05:19 Event Monitoring: Frequent Sampling for Health and Safety
• 00:06:15 The Big Takeaway: No Single Right Way to Monitor
• 00:06:59 Closing: From Good Ideas to Smart Strategies

To celebrate 100 episodes of the Air Quality Matters podcast, we welcome back our very first guest, the renowned Max, for a wide-ranging discussion on the past two years and the revolutionary future of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).

Max, one of the leading voices in air quality standards, dives into the major themes that have dominated the conversation, including the post-pandemic landscape, the rise of health-focused standards, and the critical importance of Particulate Matter (PM) control.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The Health Convergence: How the medical community and engineering discipline are finally converging to tackle IAQ, driven by the ability to measure environments more accurately.
• The Post-Pandemic Bubble: Why the huge spike in interest around airborne disease has led to a feeling of "general disappointment" in the industry, and where the real progress is being made.
• Particulate Matter (PM): The Big Problem, Simple Fix: Why PM is the major component of indoor air harm and how simple engineering controls like filtration are the cost-effective solution.
• The DALY Revolution: A deep dive into Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) and how Max’s work uses this public health metric to move away from arbitrary ventilation flow rates and quantify the actual harm of indoor contaminants in ASHRAE 62.2.
• The CO2 Myth: Max’s famously animated argument on why CO2 is not a good indicator of indoor air quality and is, in fact, an international engineering problem.
• A 9-Year Deadline: Max's personal mission to completely phase out ventilation flow rate requirements from air quality standards in less than a decade.

Join us as we reflect on 100 episodes and look forward to a future where we can judge the success of a space by its ongoing performance, not just minimum standards.

HOST:

Simon Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-air-quality-matters/

GUEST:

 Max Sherman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-sherman-b7301514/

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with

Zehnder Group -  Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect - 

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website.

If you haven't checked out the YouTube channel its here. Do subscribe if you can, lots more content is coming soon.

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and One Take, where we unpack the latest research shaping our understanding of indoor air and the built environment.

The State of Indoor Air in Australia 2025, produced by the Thrive Research Centre and key Australian institutions, represents the first real national stock take of indoor air quality in a country that has been measuring outdoor air for decades.

The Shocking Reality:

Australia has been producing national state of the environment reports for decades, but they have almost exclusively focused on outdoor air. The great indoors—where Australians spend 90% of their time—has been a massive blind spot. This document is the first real attempt to answer a very simple question: What do we actually know about the air inside our buildings?

The answer is a bit of a shock.

The Big Takeaway:

The most important finding of this report is not about specific pollution levels—it's about the sheer vastness of what we don't know. The report's great contribution is that it authoritatively documents our collective ignorance. It holds up a mirror and shows us a reflection that's mostly blank.

This report is intended as a baseline, a starting point, and a catalyst for a national conversation and hopefully a national strategy. After decades of focusing on the sky outside, it's time to finally pay serious, coordinated attention to the air in the rooms we actually live, work, and learn in.

This isn't just a report. It's the start of a very important piece of work.

https://thriveiaq.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/20250909-State-of-Indoor-Air-in-Australia-final.pdf

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with

Zehnder Group -  Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect - 

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website

• 00:00:00 Introduction: Australia's First Indoor Air Quality Baseline
• 00:01:35 The Shocking Data Gap: Less Than 0.03% Coverage
• 00:02:46 Geographic Blind Spots: The Queensland and Western Australia Concentration
• 00:03:45 Residential Findings: Gas Cookers, Wood Heaters, and Bushfire Smoke
• 00:04:27 The Hidden Dangers: Formaldehyde and Volatile Organic Compounds
• 00:05:06 Office Buildings: Traffic Proximity and HVAC Design Matter
• 00:05:37 The One Take: Documenting Our Ignorance as a Catalyst for Change
• 00:06:19 Critical Questions for the Future: Building Codes, Infiltration, and Protection
• 00:07:01 Closing: A Call to Action for Indoor Air Quality

In this landmark episode, we sit down with Dr. Esther Sternberg, a professor of medicine, scientist, and internationally recognized pioneer in the science of mind-body interaction, healing spaces, and the role of place in well-being.

Dr. Sternberg's groundbreaking work has influenced how we think about healthy buildings today. Her books—Healing Spaces, The Balance Within, and Well at Work—have become foundational texts for architects, designers, and health professionals seeking to create environments that don't just do no harm, but actively support human flourishing.

The Central Question:

There's a critical difference between designing spaces to do no harm and designing spaces to support well-being. We have the tools and knowledge to ensure clean air, excellent ventilation, and non-toxic materials—but what about resilience? What about the third leg of the stool: our own capacity to thrive, perform, and heal?

Key Topics Discussed:

• From Immune Response to Environment: Dr. Sternberg's remarkable journey from studying brain-immune connections in rats to discovering how the built environment shapes stress, performance, and health—starting with a single patient and a personal healing experience in Crete.
• Spirituality in the Workplace: Why this was the hardest chapter to write in Well at Work, and how concepts like flow, focus, rituals, and going offline are essential—not fringe—elements of peak performance and well-being.
• The Stress-Performance Rainbow: Understanding the relationship between stress and flow. Why the goal is not to eliminate stress, but to find your "middle of the rainbow"—where focus, energy, and performance peak without burnout.
• Agency and Control: Why giving people choices—over light, sound, temperature, and workspace—is one of the most powerful levers for reducing stress and enhancing resilience. The fighter pilot analogy that explains it all.
• The Seven Domains of Integrative Health: Sleep, stress and relaxation response, environment, movement, relationships, spirituality, and nutrition—and how each can be embedded into the design and operation of buildings.
• The GSA Studies: How wearable health devices and continuous environmental monitoring revealed the precise conditions—decibel levels, humidity ranges, light exposure—that optimize health, reduce stress, and improve sleep quality in office workers.
• Healing Spaces and Virtual Nature: From hospital rooms in Dublin to immersive nature experiences with Studio Elsewhere—how technology and thoughtful design can bring restorative environments to those who need them most.
• The Contrarian Path: Dr. Sternberg's story of fighting scientific dogma, being denied promotion for work that "had no relevance to human health," and ultimately proving that the brain and immune system are intimately connected—and that place matters profoundly.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/esther-sternberg-m-d-8a957927/

https://esthersternberg.com/

HOST:

Simon Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-air-quality-matters/

GUEST:

Dr. Esther Sternberg

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with

Zehnder Group -  Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect - 

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website.

• 00:00:00 Introduction: Meeting Esther Sternberg and the Science of Well-Being
• 00:02:04 Beyond Do No Harm: Designing Spaces for Well-Being
• 00:02:32 The Foundation: Clean Air and the 30-Year Cycle of Recognition
• 00:07:01 Spirituality in Buildings: Focus, Flow, and Belonging
• 00:12:36 The Science of Flow: Stress, Performance, and the Rainbow Model
• 00:21:08 Engineering for Performance: Choice, Movement, and Active Office Design
• 00:25:56 The Athlete Analogy: Building Resilience Through Strategic Stress
• 00:29:10 Virtual Nature and Reset Spaces: The 15-Minute Dose Effect
• 00:34:42 Chronic Stress and Burnout: Why Rest is Not Optional
• 00:34:01 Sustainability of Flow: Body Chemistry and Time Limits
• 00:56:49 Control and Agency: The Jet Fighter Pilot Lesson
• 00:58:44 Circadian Light: From Blue to Red and the Morning Advantage
• 01:02:15 The Given That Isn't: Why Buildings Still Cause Harm
• 00:38:32 Community and Belonging: The Antidote to Isolation
• 00:52:26 Acoustics and Culture: The Surprising Variability of Sound Preferences
• 01:10:09 The Economic Case: Return on Investment for Well-Being
• 01:18:42 Dr. Sternberg's Journey: From One Patient to the Built Environment
• 01:29:21 Fighting Dogma: The Politics of Science and Strategic Credibility
• 01:40:01 The Crete Revelation: Personal Healing and the Seven Domains
• 01:44:17 GSA Studies: Measuring the Built Environment's Impact on Health
• 01:53:22 The Future: From Mandates to Magnetic Spaces
• 01:55:50 Technology and Innovation: From Dublin to Studio Elsewhere
• 01:58:35 Closing: Building the Army of Advocates

The quality of air in our schools is directly shaping our children's health, attendance, and ability to learn.

The Paper:Impact of Air Quality including Thermal Conditions on Educational Buildings on Health, Wellbeing and Performance by Duncan Grassie and researchers from the UK Health Security Agency and Eurovent.

This scoping review is essentially a stock take—gathering all existing research to map out what we know, where the evidence is strong, and where the gaps remain.

The Fundamental Question: Children spend approximately 30% of their waking hours in educational buildings—breathing air and experiencing thermal conditions they have absolutely no control over. What is the collective evidence telling us about how these environments are shaping their health, attendance, and crucially, their ability to learn?

The Paper

Impact of Indoor Air Quality, Including Thermal Conditions, in Educational Buildings on Health, Wellbeing, and Performance: A Scoping Review

https://doi.org/10.3390/environments12080261

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with

Zehnder Group -  Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect - 

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website

• 00:00:00 Introduction: Understanding Scoping Reviews and Educational Environments
• 00:01:49 The Three Pillars: Health, Absenteeism, and Performance
• 00:02:00 Health Impacts: The Respiratory Connection
• 00:02:50 The Absenteeism Crisis: Quantifying Lost School Days
• 00:03:46 Academic Performance: The CO2 and Temperature Effect
• 00:04:56 Solutions Part 1: Source Control as the First Line of Defense
• 00:05:32 Solutions Part 2: Ventilation as the Critical Intervention
• 00:06:11 The Economic Case: A Million Investment with Million Returns
• 00:06:30 The One Take: From Evidence to Action and Our Responsibility
• 00:07:44 Closing: Thanks and Next Steps

In this essential episode, we dive deep into the complexities shaping the European built environment with an industry expert from Eurovent (YR-VENT), the European industry association for Indoor Climate (HVAC), Process Cooling, and Food Cold Chain technologies.

We tackle the core tension in Europe: reconciling the immense pressure for decarbonization with the political and social need for affordable housing. Is the EU's flagship Green Deal facing a legislative backlash? We explore the realities of the 'Fit for 55' package, the polarising effects on national politics (like in Germany), and how geopolitical shifts and inflation are changing market priorities.

Key Topics Discussed:

• The EPBD Shift: Moving from a focus purely on energy consumption to a holistic Sustainable Buildings Directive that integrates Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), occupant well-being, solar readiness, and sustainable mobility.
• IEQ: The Post-Pandemic Reality: Why the massive public awareness of indoor air quality during COVID-19 failed to translate into widespread market changes in schools and residential settings.
• Smart Systems & Complexity: The future of integrated HVAC systems, the inevitable comparison to complex modern cars, and the new digital skillset required for installers and maintenance personnel.
• The Risk of "Affordable" Building: A warning against short-sighted construction that focuses on upfront cost, leading to long-term issues like mold and poor health outcomes, and how institutional finance is now demanding IEQ data to mitigate asset risk.
• Circular Economy & EPDs: The pressing need for the HVAC industry to standardize and harmonize Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to accurately calculate embodied carbon and operational carbon for new mandatory building requirements.

About Eurovent (YR-VENT): As a coordinating body for the HVAC industry, YR-VENT represents manufacturers across heat pumps, chillers, air filters, and more. We discuss their role in monitoring legislative developments, driving market education, and running the independent third-party performance certification scheme to build confidence in product claims.

What are your thoughts on the tension between sustainability and affordability? Let us know in the comments!

HOST:

Simon Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-air-quality-matters/

GUEST:

Stijn Renneboog: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stijn-renneboog-42893613b

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with

Zehnder Group -  Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect - 

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website.

If you haven't checked out the YouTube channel its here. Do subscribe if you can, lots more content is coming soon.

• 00:00:00 Introduction: Europe's Built Environment at a Crossroads
• 00:02:39 The Housing Crisis vs Climate Action: Finding Balance
• 00:17:46 EPBD Evolution: From Energy to Holistic Sustainability
• 00:25:44 Making the Invisible Visible: Monitoring Indoor Air Quality
• 00:32:48 Sweden's Success: Ventilation Inspections Drive Energy Renovations
• 00:35:36 Beyond Minimums: The Market Opportunity for Better Air Quality
• 00:41:59 Technology Integration: The Promise and Complexity of Smart Buildings
• 00:48:01 Lessons from Singapore: Separating Conditioning from Ventilation
• 00:57:03 The COVID Legacy: Why Awareness Didn't Translate to Action
• 01:09:28 Follow the Money: How Finance is Driving Health in Buildings
• 01:16:30 Eurovent's Mission: Bridging Policy and Practice
• 01:32:10 The Embodied Carbon Challenge: Harmonizing Standards for Impact