Indoor air quality

There is growing evidence that indoor air pollution has significant short and long-term health impacts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated in 2020 that more than 3 million people worldwide die every year due to illnesses resulting from harmful indoor air in their homes. Yet, while outdoor air pollution has been studied extensively, indoor air quality is not yet as well understood.

On this page you'll find a number of Royal Society of Chemistry initiatives aimed at moving the dial on indoor air quality in the UK – through raising awareness, sharing information, and identifying research priorities.

What's relevant to me?

If you are a policymaker, civil servant, member of parliament or scientific research funder, our Indoor air quality explainer is a great place to start to learn the basics.

If you are a researcher or you fund research, our Indoor air quality report will give you an in-depth understanding of the research priorities on this topic over the next few years.

If you are looking for an accessible and engaging introduction to indoor air quality, the Indoor air quality episode of our podcast is for you. We highly recommend checking out our entire podcast too!

Indoor air quality report

UK regulation and policy on indoor air quality is not yet as well developed as for outdoor air quality and is somewhat fragmented, and there is a need for more developed and coordinated policy and regulation. This will require a holistic approach across disciplines and across policies, such as those pertaining to net zero ambitions.

There is a need to establish reliable measurement approaches, datasets, and models. Indoor air quality is incredibly complex and influenced by a huge number of different factors, and stable, long-term funding is needed for continued research and monitoring.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Analytical Science Community (ASC), the Environment, Sustainability and Energy Community (ESEC) and the Faraday Community for Physical Chemistry (FCPC) held an online workshop on indoor air quality on 9 November 2022. The workshop brought together experts and stakeholders from industry, academia, research institutes, funding bodies, policymakers and government departments and agencies. This report summarises these discussions.

While this report focuses on indoor air quality research, policy and funding within the UK and from the chemical sciences viewpoint, the role of other  disciplines (e.g. physical, life, and social sciences, and engineering) are equally critical, and many of the challenges, solutions and opportunities highlighted in this report may also be relevant worldwide.

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Indoor air quality explainer

"When we talk about air pollution, we tend to think about time spent outside and emissions from industrial chimneys and traffic. But air pollution also exists in indoor environments."

Indoor air pollution has received much less attention than outdoor pollution. While we have an understanding of the type of pollutants that are produced from indoor sources, there are still large evidence gaps about emissions and our exposure to pollution indoors. This explainer explores how we can address some of the major challenges of improving indoor air quality in the UK.

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This explainer has so far been sent to UK civil servants and MPs. Since then a parliamentary question on indoor air quality has been raised.