Air Quality Matters

This week, we dive into a groundbreaking document that could fundamentally reshape how the world approaches indoor air quality: The Global Framework for Action, published by the Global Commission on Healthy Indoor Air and stewarded by the International Wellbuilding Institute. This is the first episode in a special four part series exploring a question that challenges the very foundation of how we think about public health and the built environment: What if the single biggest barrier to protecting the 90 percent of our lives we spend indoors isn't our lack of scientific knowledge or technology, but our complete failure to recognise that we have treated the air we breathe inside our homes, schools and workplaces as an afterthought, that indoor air pollution causes over 3 million premature deaths annually, costs economies over $100 billion in avoidable health care and lost productivity, and that until we treat indoor air as a fundamental public good, measured, valued, financed and governed with the same rigour we apply to drinking water, we will continue to accept a reality where the air in our living rooms is routinely two to five times more polluted than the air outside?
Key Topics Discussed:
The Scale of the Crisis: Global air pollution is linked to approximately 7.9 million premature deaths each year. Household air pollution alone accounts for over 3 million deaths. Indoor air and outdoor air exist on a continuous spectrum. What happens outside inevitably makes its way inside, whether wildfire smoke, particulate matter from vehicle exhaust or industrial emissions. But once inside, it mingles with combustion byproducts, off-gassing from furnishings and synthetic materials, allergens, radon and respiratory pathogens. In the United States alone, avoidable indoor environmental issues cost the economy in excess of $100 billion every single year. That is direct health care cost, sick leave, lost days and the chronic drag on cognitive performance that happens when people sit in stuffy underventilated rooms. Yet for decades, indoor air quality has been treated as an afterthought, an engineering tick box buried in building service schedules, or worse, a personal lifestyle choice left to individual occupants.
Indoor Air as a Public Good: The framework calls for a cultural and structural shift where healthy indoor air is expected, measured, valued, financed, governed and continuously improved. These words mirror exactly how society managed the sanitation revolution of the 19th century or the clean water infrastructure of the 20th century. Nobody walks into an office building or school today and wonders if the tap water will give them cholera. You expect it to be clean. It is measured routinely. It is funded through municipal and private mechanisms. There are clear legal responsibilities if it fails.
Guiding Principles: The Commission established three core principles that anchor everything in the document. First is equity. Vulnerability in the built environment is never evenly distributed. The people who suffer the worst air quality are almost always the most vulnerable. Children whose lungs and brains are still developing, older adults, lower income families living in poorly maintained housing with chronic damp and mould, and workers in high exposure environments. Solutions must prioritise those at greatest risk. Second is locality and trust. There is no one size fits all engineering solution. High performance mechanical ventilation that works in cold dry Nordic climates makes zero sense in a humid tropical coastal city. Solutions must be climate responsive, culturally appropriate and rooted in local supply chains. Occupants want credible transparent data. They want to know what is in the air, how it is being measured and whether systems installed are actually doing what they claim. Third is the health climate nexus. For too long, the energy efficiency lobby and the indoor air quality community have eyed each other with suspicion. We cannot solve the climate crisis by making buildings toxic to occupants. And we cannot protect human health by burning down the planet with inefficient HVAC systems.
https://resources.wellcertified.com/tools/global-framework-for-action/
The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with
Mann + Hummel https://www.mann-hummel.com/en.html Particles Plus https://particlesplus.com/
Eurovent (https://www.eurovent.eu/) - Aico (https://www.aico.co.uk/) - Lindab (https://www.lindab.ie/) - S&P UK (https://www.solerpalau.com/en-uk/)
The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

This week, we sit down with Jason Wolfson, President of AirCycler, who has spent over two decades at the centre of residential indoor air quality and energy efficiency standards in North America, to explore a question that fundamentally challenges how we think about home ventilation: What if the single biggest barrier to delivering healthy indoor air in homes isn't our lack of scientific knowledge or technology—but our complete failure to recognise that the past 25 years of ventilation strategy has been based on educated guesses using bedrooms and square footage.
Key Topics Discussed:
From Build America to Controlled Ventilation: The DOE's Build America program in 1995 under President Clinton was the epicentre of everything that followed. Homes were made airtight to save energy, reduce carbon and cut dependence on foreign oil. Insulation improved. Ducts were sealed. But then the problem became obvious. Humans are polluters. Homes had been naturally ventilated through leaks. That worked fine. You used to walk by a window and feel a draft in winter. But that was energy loss. When that energy loss was eliminated, controlled fresh air became essential. AirCycler developed the first commercial controller in 1999 that watched the thermostat and ensured minimum runtime on the blower so homes got a measured amount of air instead of relying on random leaks.
The Bedroom and Square Footage Problem: For 25 years, ASHRAE 62.2 has determined ventilation rates based on a formula using bedrooms and square footage. Bedrooms plus one approximates occupancy. Square footage adds a factor for the size of the home. That formula has been the foundation of residential ventilation in the United States. But it is not a feedback system. It is a guess. Jason compares it to heating a home without being able to measure temperature. You would calculate the heat loss, install a furnace with double the capacity, and run it half the time. It might work on average, but you would be overheating or underheating constantly. That is exactly what has been happening with ventilation. Most of the time homes are overventilating, wasting energy. During high pollution events like cooking or large gatherings, homes are underventilating.
The Only Question That Matters: Jason has one ask from the scientists at the IEA EBC Annex 101 conference. Tell me when to turn the ventilation on. That is it. What are the stressors to react to? What is the base rate to handle pollutants we cannot measure? Industry is already shipping products with responsive controls. They are reading peer reviewed literature and making engineering decisions. But they are not building scientists. They need guidance. If the academic and standards community does not adapt quickly enough, industry will outrun them. Local code officials will see what works in practice and adopt it into local codes. ASHRAE 62.2 and Annex 101 could become irrelevant. It happened in the computer industry in the 1980s when Intel outpaced IEEE on bus standards. It could happen here.
GUEST:
Jason Wolfson - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-wolfson-b3a5045/
AirCycler - https://www.aircycler.com/
IEA EBC Annex 101 - https://annex101.iea-ebc.org/
The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with
Mann + Hummel https://www.mann-hummel.com/en.html Particles Plus https://particlesplus.com/
Eurovent (https://www.eurovent.eu/) - Aico (https://www.aico.co.uk/) - Lindab (https://www.lindab.ie/) - S&P UK (https://www.solerpalau.com/en-uk/)
The One Take Podcast in Partnership with
SafeTraces (https://www.safetraces.com/) - Inbiot (https://www.inbiot.es/?utm_campaign=simon&utm_source=airqualitymatters&utm_medium=podcast) - Farmwood (https://farmwood.co.uk/) - iE Electronics (https://www.eielectronics.ie/) and iAir Group (https://iair-group.com/)
Zehnder https://www.zehndergroup.com/en
Charity Partner - https://www.saferairproject.org/

This week, we sit down with Rebecca Coates, Head of Radon Projects at PropertEco. Who has spent over 16 years managing radon testing and mitigation programs across the UK, to explore a question that fundamentally challenges how we think about indoor air quality and home safety: Our complete failure to recognise that for the price of a family meal out, any homeowner can test their property, that remediation is not tearing up floors or spending tens of thousands, but drilling one hole from outside and installing a fan in an afternoon, and that until we treat radon mitigation like servicing a boiler, something routine and well understood, over 1,100 people a year in the UK alone will continue to die from lung cancer caused by a gas they never knew was there?
Key Topics Discussed:
What Radon Remediation Actually Looks Like: Radon remediation is not about cleaning contaminated materials or tearing up your home. Once the gas is gone, the problem is solved. The most common solution is a radon sump system installed from outside the building. A small hole is core drilled beneath the foundations, a void is excavated to create a point of low pressure, and pipework with an inline fan draws radon out from beneath the building and discharges it safely above roof level. The work is completed in a day. It costs around three to three and a half thousand pounds for a standard residential property. No one needs to leave their home. There is no dust inside. It is not disruptive. And in 95 percent of cases, it works first time.
The Suspended Floor Challenge: Suspended timber floors are more complicated than solid floors. You have a ready made void running under the whole footprint of the building. Sometimes extracting from that void works beautifully. Sometimes it makes levels worse by drawing more radon up through the floorboards. There is no one size fits all solution. It can require trial and error. Sometimes the answer is to ignore the floor void completely and drill deeper beneath the building to create a sump at a lower level. Suspended floors bring moisture risk, thermal performance, air movement and radon together in ways that require multidisciplinary expertise. Many radon specialists come from property preservation backgrounds precisely because of this complexity.
Ventilation as a First Line of Defence: Where radon levels are moderate, improving ventilation can be enough. Radon is a gas. Dilution works. Somewhere between 50 and 75 percent of homes do not have adequate ventilation. Fixing that can solve radon problems and bring co benefits for damp, mould and condensation. Positive input ventilation can work by gently increasing air pressure in the building to inhibit radon ingress and by diluting what is already there with fresh filtered air from outside. For low to moderate radon levels, this can be a very effective first step before considering a sump system.
The Awareness Gap and the Path Forward: The biggest problem is that people do not know what they do not know. Carbon monoxide awareness has grown dramatically over the last two decades. Most homes now have a carbon monoxide alarm as standard. Considerably fewer people die each year from carbon monoxide poisoning than radon induced lung cancer. Yet radon remains invisible in public consciousness. The UK has one of the best radon maps in the world. Testing costs about fifty pounds. Remediation is straightforward. But unless the message reaches the man on the street, nothing changes. Social housing and schools are starting to take this seriously. The missing piece is the homeowning population. Radon testing should be as routine as an MOT on your car. You spend far more time in your house than your car. It is a one off cost to know whether the environment where your family spends 90 percent of their lives is safe.
GUEST:
Rebecca Coates - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccacoates-radon-advice/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-coates-radon/
https://properteco.co.uk/
https://radonassociation.co.uk/
https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps
The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with
Mann + Hummel https://www.mann-hummel.com/en.html Particles Plus https://particlesplus.com/
Eurovent (https://www.eurovent.eu/) - Aico (https://www.aico.co.uk/) - Lindab (https://www.lindab.ie/) - S&P UK (https://www.solerpalau.com/en-uk/)
The One Take Podcast in Partnership with
SafeTraces (https://www.safetraces.com/) - Inbiot (https://www.inbiot.es/?utm_campaign=simon&utm_source=airqualitymatters&utm_medium=podcast) - Farmwood (https://farmwood.co.uk/) - iE Electronics (https://www.eielectronics.ie/) and iAir Group (https://iair-group.com/)
Zehnder https://www.zehndergroup.com/en
Charity Partner - https://www.saferairproject.org/

This week, we sit down with Jihyun Park, associate professor in the Department of Architecture at Ewha Womans University in South Korea, Vice Director of the EWA Global Institute for Sustainable Partnerships and Empowerment, and founder and CEO of Atlasen, a venture company specialising in indoor environmental diagnostics, smart sensing and performance based management solutions, to explore a question that fundamentally challenges how we think about building performance and post occupancy evaluation.
Key Topics Discussed:
From Architecture Practice to Building Performance: Jihyun spent over seven years working as an architectural designer in Korea, designing everything from office buildings to dormitories. But even while working in practice, she was troubled by a fundamental question. After a building was handed over, she had no idea whether it was actually a good building or not. Designers used formal references, copied details and systems from previous projects, but never knew if those systems worked in the real world. This gap between design intent and actual performance drove her into research. She wanted to understand not just how buildings were designed, but how they actually performed once people occupied them. That curiosity led her to pursue a PhD in building performance evaluation at Carnegie Mellon and eventually to founding Atlasen.
Korea's Indoor Air Quality Evolution: Korea has had indoor air quality regulations for over 30 years, but the standards were relatively loose compared to North America. After COVID, everything changed. People became intensely interested in indoor air quality, driven not only by the pandemic but also by particulate pollution from China and increasing cases of skin conditions linked to toxic building materials. Before COVID, buyers wanted luxurious imported materials. Now they want healthy products. Younger generations are willing to pay more for healthy buildings. The shift has been dramatic and sustained. Energy was the focus. Now health and wellness are driving decisions in the built environment.
Founding Atlasen and Building Your Own Sensors: Jihyun founded Atlasen because she wanted to integrate indoor environmental quality evaluation into building performance assessment. She had worked with Korea's electric power company, but the focus was entirely on energy savings. She believed energy efficiency should never come at the expense of occupant comfort and satisfaction. She wanted real time post occupancy evaluation combined with occupant surveys. But the equipment available was either too bulky, too expensive, or not accurate enough. So she built her own. She is now on the fourth generation of her in house sensor, which measures 15 different parameters including 10 air quality metrics covering particulates, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, temperature and humidity. The sensors are small, invisible, accurate and used in projects across Korea, Canada and Hong Kong.
The WELL Platinum Breakthrough: Jihyun led Korea's first WELL Core and Shell Platinum certification for a major mixed use development in Gangnam, Seoul. The project included two buildings with hotels, retail and office space, and housed some of the world's leading global companies. It is one of the most expensive buildings in the Gangnam area. The reason she got the project was simple. Other companies said they did not know how to do it and could not do it. She said she could. The building was already constructed and occupied for more than five years.
GUEST:
Jihyun Park https://www.linkedin.com/in/jihyun-park-3a70b212/
Atlasen - http://atlasen.com/?lang=en
Mann + Hummel https://www.mann-hummel.com/en.html Particles Plus https://particlesplus.com/
Eurovent (https://www.eurovent.eu/) - Aico (https://www.aico.co.uk/) - Lindab (https://www.lindab.ie/) - S&P UK (https://www.solerpalau.com/en-uk/)
The One Take Podcast in Partnership with
SafeTraces (https://www.safetraces.com/) - Inbiot (https://www.inbiot.es/?utm_campaign=simon&utm_source=airqualitymatters&utm_medium=podcast) - Farmwood (https://farmwood.co.uk/) - iE Electronics (https://www.eielectronics.ie/) and iAir Group (https://iair-group.com/)
Zehnder https://www.zehndergroup.com/en
Charity Partner - https://www.saferairproject.org/

This week, we sit down with Ciarán Cuffe, co-chair of the European Green Party and former rapporteur on the landmark revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, to explore a question that fundamentally challenges how we think about European policy and the built environment: What if the single biggest barrier to transforming our buildings isn't our lack of scientific knowledge or technology—but our complete failure to recognise that the most ambitious building legislation in European history was negotiated through late night deals, diplomatic trilogues, and careful political capital management, and that unless we understand how policy actually gets made, keep decision makers accountable during implementation, and translate technical directives into language that resonates with families worried about healthy homes, even the most groundbreaking legislation will fail at the national level?
Key Topics Discussed:
From Architecture to the Brussels Machine: Ciarán brings a rare perspective, moving from architecture and local government in Dublin to national politics and finally to the European Parliament, where he landed what he calls a policy wonk paradise. As rapporteur for the EPBD recast, he spent two-thirds of his final two years in Europe negotiating what would become the most ambitious building law the continent has ever seen. The Greens threw everything at securing this file during the auction process for committee assignments. They didn't think they would get it, but they did. And it became the centrepiece of the European Green five years, alongside the European Climate Law and over 20 interconnected pieces of legislation covering everything from maritime fuels to energy trading.
Inside the Trilogues: European policymaking is not just about the parliament. It is about three institutions: the European Parliament, the Council of Member States, and the European Commission. Ciarán spent countless hours in meetings with Commission officials from DG Energy, attending Council meetings in Luxembourg where energy ministers gathered, and working the sidelines to convince national teams that specific provisions would work for Sweden, for Malta, for Cyprus. The final deals happened in late night trilogues, where representatives from all three bodies sat in a room with pieces of paper, writing down numbers and asking, can we live with a 16 percent energy reduction by 2030? People were on the phone back to ambassadors, back to capitals. Eventually, you get a deal done. But within a complex technical document, you win in some areas and lose in others.
The Affordability Backlash: Almost immediately after the recast was agreed, there was a political backlash on affordability. In Italy, Salvini, the Minister for Transport, declared that Brussels was going to take your home. It became a huge story. Ciarán and his team had to do outreach to major Italian newspapers like Sole 24 Ore to clarify that no, Brussels was not taking anyone's home, and in fact, Brussels would supply much of the money required for deep retrofits. The pushback showed that the directive had been pushed about as far as politically possible. If there had been no reaction, it would have meant they hadn't been ambitious enough.
Indoor Environmental Quality Enters the Directive: One of the most significant achievements of the recast is the embedding of indoor environmental quality as a fundamental pillar of building performance. This shift, recognised globally by the indoor air quality movement, moves buildings from being seen as units of energy to being seen as homes. Ciarán believes the pandemic helped make the case. High mortality rates in northern Italy, in overcrowded urban areas with poor outdoor and indoor air quality, made it stunningly obvious that we needed to focus on the quality of the spaces where people spend most of their lives. Many of his colleagues in Brussels were living in small apartments with no balconies, no private outdoor space. Improving indoor air quality became not just a health issue, but an equity issue.
GUEST:
Ciarán Cuffe
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciarancuffe/The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with
Mann + Hummel https://www.mann-hummel.com/en.html Particles Plus https://particlesplus.com/
Eurovent (https://www.eurovent.eu/) - Aico (https://www.aico.co.uk/) - Lindab (https://www.lindab.ie/) - S&P UK (https://www.solerpalau.com/en-uk/)
The One Take Podcast in Partnership with
SafeTraces (https://www.safetraces.com/) - Inbiot (https://www.inbiot.es/?utm_campaign=simon&utm_source=airqualitymatters&utm_medium=podcast) - Farmwood (https://farmwood.co.uk/) - iE Electronics (https://www.eielectronics.ie/) and iAir Group (https://iair-group.com/)
Zehnder https://www.zehndergroup.com/en
Charity Partner - https://www.saferairproject.org/