Indoor Air Quality Monitoring
Did you know that most people spend around 90% of their time indoors? Whether at home, work, school or during leisure, the quality of the air we breathe indoors can have a significant impact on our health and wellbeing. Yet, indoor air quality often receives less attention than outdoor air quality. By monitoring in indoor environments, we can better understand the pollutants we are exposed to daily and take meaningful steps to improve air quality for healthier living spaces.
As part of the Forth-ERA indoor air quality network, we will be monitoring a variety of indoor spaces where people spend time such as in schools, early years settings, sports facilities, retail, hospitality, and healthcare settings.
Can I participate?
Yes! We still have a few spaces available on our monitoring programme. You don’t need to have any concerns about your air quality to take part—we’re looking for a range of settings where people spend time. If your premises are quite large, or there are multiple rooms that could be monitored, we are happy to consider placing more than one monitor. There is very limited research on changes in air quality across one indoor environment, so this type of data is valuable for research.
If you are interested in hosting a sensor, please complete the form at the bottom of the page and a member of the Forth-ERA team will be in touch. If you have any queries regarding this project, please use the contact details below.
What’s involved?
Participating in this project is free and involves hosting an indoor air quality monitor in your property. You can see on the right that it’s a small and unobtrusive device that looks a bit like a Wi-Fi router. The monitor will gather data on common air pollutants, including particulate matter, carbon dioxide, and volatile organic compounds. This is valuable data for proactively managing your indoor environment.
Our team will visit your property to install the sensor and conduct a room audit. This visit typically takes around 15 minutes. The sensor will be powered by your mains electricity (at a cost of ~£0.75 annually) using a standard plug and needs to be connected to Wi-Fi for data transmission. Since data usage is very small (~2MB per day) this should not impact your internet access, however an alternative network can be provided if needed.
The room audit is designed to capture information such as flooring type and ventilation so we can better understand the factors that influence indoor air quality.
What are the benefits of getting involved?
By participating in our indoor air quality monitoring programme, you’ll gain valuable insights into the air quality in your space and contribute to important research aimed at improving public health. Monitoring indoor environments is crucial, as it helps us understand the factors affecting air quality and guides efforts to create healthier living spaces for everyone.
Research on indoor air quality, as compared to outdoor, is only just really getting started, but first findings suggest that we can improve the wellbeing and satisfaction of customers and visitors as well as the health and productivity of employees by ensuring good air quality.
We provide you with access to your monitoring data to investigate for interesting trends and data points. The monitor’s little display shows you real-time data, and the lights on the monitor are colour-coded to indicate current overall air quality levels in the room, so you know when it might be time to ventilate again. You will also receive an information sheet with helpful tips for how you can manage your indoor air quality effectively, so that you can act on the data you’re receiving.
The data from your monitor will only be seen by you and by us. It will feed into the different industry averages (e.g., retail, sport & wellbeing centres, hospitality) which we publish on our online Indoor Air Quality dashboard, but we will never share which businesses we collect data from. Aggregations are only made once a sufficient number of businesses in each industry are being monitored, so no one will be able to identify Air Quality levels in an individual business from any of the data aggregates that we publish. You alone will be able to compare your business’ data to the industry average for benchmarking.
I’d like to get involved!
Please complete the form below and a member of the Forth-ERA team will be in touch. If you have any questions about participating, please contact: forth-era@stir.ac.uk.
Information Sheet