Our mission and objectives

The Indoor Air Quality Working party is a group of leading clean air health and built environment researchers.

We work collaboratively to advance public understanding, equality of access and experience of healthier indoor air for children and other vulnerable groups within the wider population.

Our objectives are:

  • To synthesise and make recommendations from evidence-based research of indoor air quality and its health effects on children and other vulnerable groups within the wider population
  • To give robust evidence a narrative, a story, a relevance in everyday life.
  • To inform and educate those in a position to take action for healthier indoor air.

 

Who we are

Current members of the working party and secretariat

Past members

 

Our history

Many of our members initially came together when the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), in collaboration with the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), established in June 2018 an Indoor Air Quality Working Group to bring together experts from a range of specialities from a number of universities in the UK to investigate the evidence around indoor air quality and to propose steps to protect the health of children.

Our findings were published in a report by the RCPCH and RCP in January 2020 in a document called The Inside Story: Health effects of indoor air quality on children and young people. We found that improving indoor air quality helps to promote good respiratory health and can reduce the risk of respiratory infections.  The report includes a comprehensive set of recommendations for Government, local authorities, health practitioners and their professional bodies as well as guidance for families.

Following the publication of that report, all the working party members who had authored the report decided to regroup and continue to work together to make the findings of the scientific review accessible to children, parents, built environment and health practitioners. We’ve since added to our membership and some members have stepped down due to other work commitments. A full list of members is set out above.

The secretariat for the Indoor Air Quality Working Party is hosted by the University of Reading, which acts as the accountable body for the Working Party.