Indoor Air Quality

Indoor air quality (IAQ) plays a critical role in human health. Improvements to IAQ, including increased ventilation and filtration, have the potential to lessen the impacts of certain chronic conditions, such as asthma, and prevent respiratory disease transmission, thereby reducing pandemic risk through passive measures rather than individual actions like handwashing and masking. However, measures to improve IAQ are often overlooked or misunderstood due to various factors such as cost and maintenance challenges, absence of national or state regulation, and a lack of incentives, information, and resources.

The importance of IAQ in reducing transmission of respiratory diseases became clear early in the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the IAQ team at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security provides expertise, identifies research gaps, recommends policy options, and raises awareness to improve indoor air quality and mitigate the spread of airborne respiratory diseases in the United States and globally.

Links to the Center’s outputs on IAQ can be found below.

Summary of Work

In 2024, the Center convened two interdisciplinary meetings of experts, one to discuss using Far-UV as a potential tool to reduce the risk of pandemics and another to discuss the research gaps in airborne disease transmission and prevention. IAQ team members also attended several conferences during the year, including a series of ASHRAE events and working groups, the Global Health Security Conference (June), and Indoor Air 2024 (July). Paula Olsiewski, PhD, contributing scholar at the Center and IAQ team co-lead, also provided a supporting statement for The Indoor Air Quality and Healthy Schools Act introduced in the US House by Representatives Paul Tonko (D-NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).

In 2023, the Center introduced the Model Clean Indoor Air Act, a legal framework that state legislatures can adapt to sensibly monitor, regulate, and improve indoor air by inspecting IAQ and publicly posting results. Additionally, both Olsiewski and Richard Bruns, PhD, senior scholar at the Center and IAQ team co-lead, provided testimony in support of several indoor air quality bills introduced in the New York State Assembly.

In 2022, the Center hosted a meeting of national IAQ experts and policymakers, which highlighted the need to leverage lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to make rapid changes, before the issue fades from the public eye. In 2021, the Center published a report on improving school ventilation to reduce COVID-19 spread, hosted a related webinar, and provided K-12 schools with recommendations and an open letter encouraging IAQ improvements.

Through these initiatives, the Center provides attainable, cost-effective, phased approaches and centralized resources to raise awareness around and achieve better IAQ.

Project team leads: Paula Olsiewski, PhD; Richard Bruns, PhD; Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD

Project team: Alex Zhu, MSPH; Alexander Linder, MSC

Government affairs team: Melissa Hopkins, JD; Joel Straus

Project supported by: Open Philanthropy Project