Author: SynAir-G

The 7^th of September is the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies and SynAir-G stands at the forefront of the global effort to combat air pollution and promote sustainable living. The awareness day was created by the United Nations Environment Programme, in response to the growing community’s awareness of air pollution risks and to underscore the necessity of further efforts to improve air quality to safeguard human and environmental health.

The 2024 theme “Invest in #CleanAirNow” is a call to governments, corporations, civil society, individuals and schools to start adopting and investing in daily actions that lead the fight for cleaner air in multiple sectors of society. This year’s theme perfectly aligns with SynAir-G’s mission to revolutionise the way we understand and address indoor air pollution, particularly in environments where the most vulnerable populations, such as children, spend their time. The global campaign calls on schools and universities to explore options and install air quality monitors so that the community is aware of the air they are breathing, to integrate air pollution issues in educational programmes and activities for students; and to involve students, teachers and professors to make their contribution to the mission.

SynAir-G project supports the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies 2024, with awareness-raising actions on indoor air quality in schools and on the health impact on children and school workers, especially those with allergies and asthma. SynAir-G aims at providing scientific evidence on indoor air quality in schools, after revealing and quantifying synergistic interactions between different pollutants and their impact on human health.

SynAir-G is more than just a research project: it is a critical part of the Indoor Air and Health Cluster (IDEAL Cluster), a group of EU-funded research projects dedicated to improving indoor air quality, effectively contributing to the EU’s Zero Pollution Action Plan SynAir-G is committed to this call, not only by advancing the science on indoor air quality but by ensuring that the knowledge we generate is accessible and actionable for all stakeholders. By aligning our work with this year’s theme ‘Invest in #CleanAirNow’ , we are reinforcing our commitment to creating healthier indoor environments for everyone, especially for children at school.

Let’s come together to ensure that clean air is a reality for all, both indoors and out, today and for years to come.

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1st Newsletter | May 2023

 

2nd Newsletter | December 2023

 

3rd Newsletter | June 2024

 

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Image 1: SynAir-G researchers (Milena Papatesta, Maria Lappa, and Maria Kritikou) with the school teacher and principal in the 8th Primary School of Zografou (Athens, Greece)

The team from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), who is also the project coordinator, achieved important advancements within the research activities of WP02 “Clinical cohort”:

Exciting Developments in Our European Study Centers

The five SynAir-G clinical centres have completed all necessary procedures and obtained approvals to start recruiting children from primary schools located in areas with diverse population levels.

Recruitment Update

The study centre in Athens, Greece, has successfully completed recruitment for the current academic year, enrolling 250 children from five different schools in Athens. This milestone marks significant progress in our project. The team in Greece has already screened more than 20 children to form the nested cohort, which includes children with allergy–associated diseases and matched controls!

Image 2: SynAir-G poster hanged closed to children drawings in a school in Athens

Upcoming Recruitment

Looking ahead, our study centres in Finland, the UK, Georgia, and France are gearing up to begin their recruitment efforts in September 2024. Each of these centres will be reaching out to primary schools within their regions to engage students and families in clinical SynAir-G study.

SynAir-G Boxes Deployment

In parallel with the recruitment efforts, we are excited to announce that the SynAir-G boxes are ready for deployment. The devices will be installed in the participating schools to start collecting data regarding the quality of air in the classrooms. This step is vital for our research, as it will provide insights into the environmental factors influencing children’s health.

 

Image 3: SynAir-G researchers (Milena Papatesta, Maria Lappa) and teachers from the 6th Primary School of Agia Paraskevi (Athens, Greece)

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SynAir-G for the World Environment Day

The 5^th of June is World Environment Day (WED). Led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), World Environment Day is the biggest international day for the environment. On this day millions of people from government, business, civil society and schools across the world join efforts to raise awareness on the environmental challenges and influence environmental action.

 

“Our Land. Our Future We are #GenerationRestoration”

is the UNEP campaign slogan in 2024, focusing on restoring land, halting desertification and building drought resilience.

 

The SynAir-G project supports the World Environment Day shining a spotlight on climate change and health-related consequences on highly susceptible populations, including children and those people living with allergies and asthma.

The world’s ecosystems are endangered, driven by unsustainable production and consumption patterns that fuel the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Climate change is a health threat. The health impact of climate change has become an undeniable reality. Climate-driven hazards such as heatwaves, air pollution, water scarcity, and food supply problems increase deaths and disease in the EU and globally.

People living with allergy and asthma are particularly vulnerable. Several environmental risk factors including indoor and outdoor pollution, as well as climate change can elicit and exacerbate allergic diseases. These factors also impact our indoor air. The quality of the air that we breath daily in our homes, offices or schools, is highly susceptible to pollutants coming from indoor but also outdoor.

SynAir-G will reveal and quantify the synergistic interactions between different pollutants affecting health, with a specific focus on the school setting. One of SynAir-G’s core outcomes includes interventions with the potential to upgrade the living environment of schools in Europe, with all children enjoying not just clean air, but a “forest-grade” indoor climate.

It is crucial to protect the Environment and mitigate the effects of climate change by conserving and restoring ecosystems.

SynAir-G mission is to safeguard and promote citizens’ health and well-being, by preventing premature deaths, diseases and inequalities related to environmental pollution and degradation. Early awareness of health hazards and participation in their management from a young age is SynAir-G’s contribution to increasing resilience of the population to air-pollution and climate change related health effects.

 

Do you want to stay in touch with SynAir-G activities? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, and subscribe to the SynAir-G Newsletter!

The FORTH team performed the first comprehensive air quality monitoring SynAir-G campaign inside and outside the 8th Elementary School of Zografou in Athens from January 25 to February 17, 2024.

The main objectives of the campaign were to:

• Monitor gas and particulate air pollutants inside a classroom with state-of-the-art continuous instruments and low-cost sensors.
• Monitor the air outside the school with the same sets of instruments.
• Develop appropriate calibration approaches for the low-cost sensors for a typical classroom using machine learning algorithms.
• Characterize the volatile organic compounds in the classroom continuously using high mass resolution proton-transfer time-of-flight mass spectrometry (PTR-ToF/MS).
• Quantify the sources of air pollutants in the studied classroom.

The study combined low-cost sensor measurements (the FORTH ENSENSIA system) alongside high-end instrumentation. The ENSENSIA box includes electrochemical sensors measuring CO2, CO, NOx, O3, SO2, PM2.5, total VOCs, HCHO, temperature and relative humidity. The high-end instrumentation included several monitors for CO2, CO, NOx, O3, SO2, an aethalometer for black carbon, a Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer for particle size distributions and the PTR-ToF/MS for continuous measurements of individual volatile organic compounds.

The monitoring equipment included 5 ENSENSIA low-cost sensor systems, 2 placed inside the classroom and 3 outdoors. The high-end instrumentation was inside the FORTH mobile lab, which was parked outside the school but near the classroom. An automatic valve mechanism was used to interchange between indoor and outdoor measurements for the high-end instrumentation every 20 min.

The results of the measurements are currently analyzed by the FORTH team.

Image 1: Photo of the FORTH mobile laboratory parked outside the school. The blue ENSENSIA low-cost air quality system can also be seen.

Image 2: Photo of some of the instruments inside the FORTH mobile laboratory during the measurements.

Image 3: Photo of the classroom in which the measurements took place after hours. The blue ENSENSIA monitoring system can be seen on top of the bookshelf.

Image 1: IDEAL Cluster project representatives at IDEAL Cluster Annual General Meeting 2024 (Espoo, Finland)

After a year and a half from the previous in-person meeting of the IDEAL Cluster in Athens, the members of the IDEAL Cluster met again in Espoo (Finland) for the annual general meeting. The event took place on the 15th and 16th of May 2024 at Aalto University, hosted by InChildHealth project and which is currently coordinating the IDEAL Cluster Initiative.

The IDEAL (Indoor Air Pollution and Health) Cluster is a task force promoted by the European Commission to optimise synergies, avoid overlaps and increase the impact of the projects selected for funding under the call HORIZON-HLTH-2021-ENVHLTH-02-02. SynAir-G is part of the Cluster, together with InChildHealth, K-HealthinAir, LEARN, TwinAir, INQUIRE and EDIAQI, and they collaborate with the creation of 7 working groups focused on topics of common interest.

The meeting counted the participation of approximately 20 people in person and 70 connected online during the two days of the event, including Rita Araújo, Policy Officer at the European Commission and in charge of supervising the IDEAL Cluster.

 

IDEAL Cluster Projects updates 

The first day began with the presentations of the progress, highlights and learnings of the seven projects by their project coordinators:

• Heidi Salonen (InChildHealth),
• Pernilla Bohlin Nizzetto (INQUIRE),
• Ernesto Alfaro-Moreno (LEARN),
• José Fermoso Domínguez (K-HealthinAir),
• Nikolaos Papadopoulos (SynAir-G, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens),
• Stylianos Karatzas (TwinAir),
• Mario Lovrič (EDIAQI).

In general, all projects have achieved significant progress in the past 18 months, and they look forward to sharing new results in the future.

The presentations were later followed by greetings from Rita Araújo and the European Commission Officers who were connected online.

 

Image 2: IDEAL Cluster Project Coordinators (from left to right: Pernilla Bohlin Nizzetto (INQUIRE), José Fermoso Domínguez (K-HEALTHinAIR), Heidi Salonen (InChildHealth),  Ernesto Alfaro-Moreno (LEARN), Rita Araújo (European Commission), Nikolaos Papadopoulos (SynAir-G), Mario Lovrić (EDIAQI), and Stylianos Karatzas (TwinAIR))

IDEAL Cluster Working Groups updates

Throughout the two days of the meeting, participants shared updates on the activities, achievements as well as challenges of the 7 projects, together with the joint work implemented in the IDEAL Cluster Working Groups.

From SynAir-G, Valeria Ramiconi (EFA) presented as a co-leader of Working Group 1 on Science translation for policy and practice, Stefan Kelnberger (DIN) for Working Group 4 on Guidelines, and Tuomas Jartti (University of Turku) for Working Group 6 on Health Outcomes.  Similarly to projects, the working groups are also moving forward with their activities and deliverables.

If you wish to learn more about the IDEAL Cluster and its activities, visit: synairg.eu/ideal-cluster or idealcluster.eu.

 

Sharing useful learnings within the Cluster

Together with providing space to catch up on the projects and working groups activities, the annual meeting was also the occasion to discuss common strategies to close the gaps in understanding the impact on our health and well-being of indoor air quality, as well as identify common challenges that all projects face, to learn from each other and maximise the impact of the projects.

The European Commission, represented by Policy Officer Rita Araujo, highlighted the importance of the work that the Cluster projects are doing to improve and safeguard the health and well-being of citizens in indoor environments. The meeting ended with the promise to meet again in person next year, while continuing joining forces and resources.

 

The recently published PeARL Pediatric Asthma Monitoring Guidelines, formally endorsed by EAACI, REG, APAPARI, INTERASMA, and WAO (Ped Allergy Immunology 2024; 35:e14129), include the need for evaluation of possible exposure to irritants, such as tobacco smoke and other air pollutants, in children whose asthma is not well controlled. Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood with prevalence reaching 20% in some populations.

Asthma is characterised by airway hyperresponsiveness, therefore patients are the first to suffer from air pollution; most children with asthma have atopic allergy, making them susceptible to common environmental allergens.

PeARL also points out that allergen exposure, as well as markers of sensitization, are among the key monitoring parameters. The PeARL Monitoring Guidelines have been led by SynAir-G Principal Investigator, Prof Nikos Papadopoulos, with several SynAir-G partners who have contributed.

Disclaimer: PeARL (Pediatric Asthma in Real Life) is an initiative not linked to or funded by SynAir-G project.

 

Image: Panagiotis Chaslaridis (on the left), EFA Senior Policy Advisor, attended as a speaker at a EVIA event on  Indoor Air Quality policy (Brussels, 15 February 2024)

Poor indoor air quality impacts everyone, but especially our community; people with respiratory diseases and other underlying health conditions including allergy. EFA, one of SynAir-G partners, was a guest speaker at a policy event on Indoor Air Quality organised by the European Ventilation Industry Association (EVIA), where we brought to the table the perspective of patients with chronic respiratory conditions.

Europeans spend 90% of their time indoors. But did you know that indoor air can be 2-5 times, even up to 100 times, more polluted than outdoor air?

On 15 February, EFA was invited to participate in the policy event ‘Breath of Change – Elevating Indoor Air Quality in European politics’, organised by the European Ventilation Industry Association (EVIA) in Brussels.

The panel discussion gathered an interesting line-up of speakers, including representatives from the European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy (leading the revision of the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which includes provisions for ventilation indoors), regional authorities, technical ventilation experts, as well as the ventilation industry and EFA.

Since 1991, EFA has worked across the policy spectrum advocating for improved IAQ at the EU/Europe levels. EFA works on Indoor Air Quality also in the context of the SynAir-G project, which is part of a larger cluster of EU-funded research projects known as the IDEAL Cluster.

Check the full article on the EFA website