InChildHealth - Identifying determinants for indoor air quality and their health impact in environments for children: measures to improve indoor air quality and reduce disease burdens

InChildHealth will integrate health, environmental, technical and social sciences research to identify determinants for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and evaluate their impact in environments occupied by school children. We will focus on chemicals, particle concentrations, microorganisms and physical parameters in schools, homes, sports halls and transport. The IAQ of these environments determines the dose received by the children and may directly influence their health and well-being. An environmental epidemiological study and controlled interventions conducted in schools in three European cities will assess the health effects of multipollutant airborne exposures on respiratory infections, allergies, and neurological and cognitional symptoms. In addition, dose-response will be evaluated with a novel cytotoxicity testing pipeline using in-vitro approaches. The InChildHealth consortium will cover an impressive variety of geographical and cultural diversity, with targeted exposure measurement campaigns and citizen involvement in seven European countries from Northern, Central and Southern Europe and interventions in Australia. All project's results will converge in the InChildHealth Integrated Risk Assessment Tool, which will provide information on the interactions between the sources, emissions, concentrations, exposure, doses and disease for children. Besides, we will develop user-friendly and low-cost monitoring technologies and strategies (technical and behavioural) to improve IAQ and reduce disease burdens. InChildHealth will produce many FAIR datasets on air pollutants and their main sources for indoor environments occupied by children in different climatic and social settings in Europe. Our findings will be disseminated as guidelines, recommendations and training material partly developed with children in a citizen science approach. Such material will support the IAQ regulatory framework in schools, facilitate IAQ management, and broadly promote healthier indoors.

Coordinator: Aalto University, Finland

Other partners:

1. University of Oulu, Finland
2. Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Cientificas
3. Polytechneio Kritis, Greece
4. AIT Austrian Institute of Technology Gmbh, Austria
5. Instituto Politecnico De Lisboa, Portugal
6. Associacao Do Instituto Superior Tecnico Para A Investigacao E Desenvolvimento, Portugal
7. National Center For Scientific Research "Demokritos", Greece
8. Aarhus Universitet, Denmark
9. Fundacion Privada Instituto De Salud Global Barcelona, Spain
10. Zentrum Fur Soziale Innovation Gmbh, Austria
11. Sensing Solutions Sl, Spain
12. Csem Centre Suisse D'electronique et de Microtechnique SA Recherche et Developpement, Switzerland
13. Monash University, Australia
14. University of Essex, UK