CAREER: Physical transformations of aerosols after transport between indoor and outdoor environments

Although outdoor air pollution is known to shorten human lives, people actually spend most of their time indoors. Air inside homes, schools, offices, and other buildings constantly interchanges with outside air. It is thus important to understand how this interchange affects air pollution in both spaces to fully assess human health risk.

This is particularly true as outdoor pollution in the USA has decreased in recent decades while indoor sources of air pollution become more important. The goal of this project is to understand how air pollutants known as aerosols (suspensions of fine particles in air) change while they are transported between indoor and outdoor environments. This goal will be achieved through a combination of experiments in laboratory and real-world settings to measure physical and chemical transformations of aerosols.

Successful completion of this research will contribute new knowledge about aerosols to protect human health. The research program will be integrated with educational activities to train the next generation of scientists. A key aspect of this effort is a focus on training scientists to become better public communicators to help improve the Nation’s STEM workforce and increase scientific literacy.

The goal of this CAREER project is to investigate how physical properties of aerosols change once they are transported between indoor and outdoor environments. This goal will be achieved through three research objectives: i) measure the physical transformation of outdoor aerosols as they are exposed to indoor environmental conditions; ii) quantify the formation of secondary organic aerosols from indoor precursors and the oxidative aging of primary indoor aerosols; and iii) investigate the physical transformations that indoor emissions from a real home undergo in an oxidative environment.

Successful completion of this research will generate novel data on secondary organic aerosol precursors that are emitted by indoor activities to contextualize the evidence of indoor air pollutants found in outdoor field campaigns. This work will also inform efforts by environmental health and epidemiological professionals to protect human health, as well as contribute to the development of better instrumentation and low-cost sensors.

The research will be integrated with education activities to inspire students to communicate scientific topics to broader audiences. This will encourage the next generation of students to pursue careers in science and engineering, and enhance public understanding of air pollution topics.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.