Air Quality Matters

This week, we step outside the usual world of homes, schools, and offices to ask a question that might reshape how we think about the hospitality industry: What if the physical performance of a hotel room matters just as much as the quality of service—and what if guests are already telling us this in their online reviews? The paper is titled The Impact of Indoor Environmental Quality on Tourist Ac...

This week, we sit down with Adam Muggleton, Chief Technical Officer at AESG and host of the Edifice Complex Podcast. Adam's career spans project management, property development, and commissioning across 21 countries—from the UK to the Middle East and North America. He views buildings not as architectural statements, but as complex machines that are likely underperforming. With decades of experien...

This week, we tackle a question that goes to the heart of the performance gap in buildings: What if the problem isn't just poor construction or shoddy installation—but the data we're feeding into our models in the first place? There's an old saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out. If you feed a perfect model with bad assumptions, you get a perfect calculation of a fantasy. And that's...

This week, we step into the world of moisture in buildings—one of the most overlooked yet critical aspects of indoor air quality and building performance. While we talk about humidity constantly, we rarely stop to break down what we actually mean. What is moisture? Is it a pollutant? And why does it matter so much? We sit down with David Schurk, owner of HVAC Insight Consultants and a dehumidifica...

This week, we dive into a question that goes beyond sensors and science: What actually motivates people to invest in clean air for their homes—and does culture change everything? The paper is titled Indoor Air Quality: Predicting and Comparing Protective Behaviours in Germany and Portugal, published in Indoor Air, and it's based on survey data from 800 participants split evenly between the two nat...

This week, we step into one of the most overlooked yet critical areas of air quality and health: the construction site. While we spend so much time talking about indoor air quality during the operational phase of buildings, there's an entire workforce—construction and demolition workers—who spend their careers in environments that are anything but operational. And the risks they face are profound....

This week, we dive into a powerful piece of research that moves beyond surveys and snapshots to ask: What actually motivates people in deprived urban communities to change their indoor air quality behaviours—and how long does it take? The paper is titled Psychological and Contextual Drivers of Indoor Air Quality Behaviours in a Deprived Urban Community: Evidence from Participatory Research, publis...

Welcome back to a solo episode—it's just me this week, fresh off a plane from Las Vegas and the AHR Expo, and honestly, in a bit of a reflective mood. When you spend a week inside the ultimate sealed box that is Vegas—losing track of time, weather, and what the air is actually doing—it puts things in perspective. It's comfort manufactured at massive scale, designed to keep you sedated, happy, and...

This week, we tackle a question that goes beyond sensors, standards, and science: Do you trust the people telling you the air is bad? And more importantly—does that trust, or lack of it, actually change what you do about it? The paper is titled Communicating Particulate Matter Risk: The Effects of Empoweredness and Trust in Government Information and Protective Behaviour, published in the Internat...

We sit down with Dr. José Luis Castro, Director General Special Envoy for Chronic Respiratory Diseases at the WHO, to confront one of the most overlooked yet devastating health crises of our time: chronic respiratory diseases—specifically asthma and COPD. With over three decades of experience in global health leadership, he has dedicated his career to advancing sustainable health initiatives acros...

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 asks a deceptively simple question: If people could actually see the air they breathe, would they change their behavior? And perhaps more importantly for policymakers—is it worth the money to help them do...

In this essential episode, we sit down with Parag Cameron Rastogi, Director of Real Asset Analytics at GRESB, to explore one of the most powerful yet often misunderstood forces shaping the future of indoor air quality: how we measure, benchmark, and value the performance of buildings at scale. GRESB—the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark—has trillions of dollars of assets in its system. I...

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 step away from the physics and chemistry of air quality and dive firmly into the psychology of how we perceive—and crucially, misperceive—the air around us. The paper is titled Why Do We Misperceive Air Pollution? A Scoping Review of...

We sit down with John O'Connor, former chair of Ireland's Housing Commission, and Neil Freshwater, Public Affairs Manager for GB and Ireland at Velux, to explore one of the most complex challenges facing Ireland and Europe today: how do we deliver affordable housing at pace while ensuring homes are healthy, sustainable, and fit for purpose? Recorded at a Healthy Homes Ireland event in Dublin just...

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 Southea...

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 the...

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 Envi...

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...

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 Monito...

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 o...

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. Th...

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 bec...

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...

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 affordab...

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and One Take, where we unpack the latest research and reports shaping our understanding of indoor air and the built environment. This week, I'm diving into the seventh edition of a critical annual report that reads like a global health check—not for people, but for policy. The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2025, produced by the Clean Air Fund and the Clima...