#14.2 - Priyanka Kulshreshtha: Engaging Citizens in the Pursuit of Clean Air

Part 2

Priyanka Kulshreshtha -  is a founding member and Secretary of the Society of Indoor Environment (SIE), a policy think tank for issues related to indoor environmental quality in India.  She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Delhi.

She has been on the editorial board of prominent international journals, including the  Journal of Health and Pollution, Sustainability in Environment, Air Quality, Atmosphere and Health, Environmental Research, to name just a few.

She has been the Editor of SIE's quarterly newsletter, “THE INDOORS “, since 2019.

She has experience working on the European Union Project “HEALTH EVENT” and has, to her credit, more than 30 publications in international journals, articles, and conference papers.

A visiting faculty at the International Centre for Environmental Audit and Sustainable
Development and has also worked with policymakers in India regarding
formulation and scoping of IAQ guidelines.

With two decades in the field of indoor air quality management. Her core domain of work is research on Indoor Air Quality and its exposure assessment. Priyanka is a fascinating window into the field of air quality in India right now, where it has come from and where it may be heading.

She is at the heart of an exciting yet challenging environment, with so much at stake and potential. You really get the sense talking to Priyanka that things are on the move in India, and there is a generation of bright and committed researchers, policymakers, and industry professionals making waves.

We had a great conversation about the particular challenges of air quality in Dehli and other parts of the country, her work around homes, schools, the workplace, standards and where all this might be going.

Priyanka Kulshreshtha - LinkedIn

Society of Indoor Environment (SIE)

Indian Insititute of Sustainable Development 

Transcript

Simon: 0:01

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and part two of my conversation with Priyanka Kulshretha. What was the impact of Covid in India generally on on air quality awareness and the importance of indoor environments to mitigating risk? Did it raise some awareness in the short term there, like it did in other areas, or how has it generally taken and has it been overall a benefit to kind of air quality awareness in general?

Priyanka: 0:46

Covid did put the spotlight on indoor air quality or indoor air pollution, because earlier when Covid happened it we were just seeing it in a silo as a virus. Then lot of researchers, my fellow researchers, professor Prashant Kumar he is from saree, so he was also one of those good scientists who helped us identify that it is not just the virus who is going around in silos If the level of particulate in an indoor space is higher. So if I am saying that I am sitting in this room and I have like around 200 microgram per meter cube, I am at a higher risk of getting Covid if I have anyone around me. So the Covid does not. The virus did not travel on its own. It attached itself to any of the nearby particles and it travels. So if the concentration of that particle in any indoor environment is high, we will have to be you know. So that is when this research came out.

Priyanka: 1:55

That is when people started valuing indoor air quality more. We were talking about air quality exchange rate. We were talking about fresh air in indoor micro environments. That is when the processed air. Then we realized that you know we, what air we are sitting in into our offices could be processed air. There is a very small percentage of fresh air into that air. So these questions started coming up how well you know the air conditioners are maintained or the filters are cleaned, so that you know we are improving that transference of any kind of virus or bacterial diseases. So that is when you know indoor air quality did gain resilience. Before that, bio resolves was less talked about. In fact, the study that I am mentioning where we in October we did it, we could not. We had proposed by a bio resolves monitoring also, but it is slightly complex so we did not go for it. Had we had any inkling of, you know, something like that happened, it would have been really interesting to see by a salt concentration before and after go with in those environments that I am talking about.

Simon: 3:17

Yeah, I think everybody has got a much more acute interest in bio aerosols from five years ago. That is for sure. How did you find yourself in this field, priyanka? What was your kind of journey? Because you studied in Italy at one point as well, didn't you?

Priyanka: 3:38

Yeah, I did my postdoc from Italy, so I was doing my masters research and it is very intriguing. And my supervisor asked me. You know, I went with a proposal on outdoor air pollution and she said why don't you and this is way back 1999 I am talking of. So people were aware of air pollution. But she said why don't you work on indoor air pollution? And I was like is it a subject? Is it a topic that we are talking of? So then I went to the net and USEP websites and took out a lot of data and understood.

Priyanka: 4:16

So that was my first face to face with this topic, which I am, you know, last so many years I am being with. Then, there I got a research paper of Professor Mukesh Khare. He is my supervisor, my PhD supervisor, from IIT Delhi. So I came here with nothing, just my masters research, and I said, sir, I want to do work and I have to work on this. He is there. With him I started lot of work on slums, indoor air quality in different socioeconomic strata, and that is how he is the pioneer of indoor air pollution in India. He started the first of its kind study in IIT Delhi library wherein the students had started complaining of certain symptoms which were very non specific. They started complaining. You know, I am feeling very dizzy, I am feeling headache and when I am inside the library I am not able to concentrate well, for other reasons as well. But yes, that preempted Professor Khare to start a thesis on why is it happening. And that is when we came aboard with sick building syndrome symptoms, the problem with the air handling unit in the library, and that is how my journey started.

Priyanka: 5:42

And then I went to Italy, university of Milan, and Professor Paolo Karar he was working on health vent, so that is a European Union project on health and ventilation, and I jumped the wagon and again, I worked there for good amount of time. So I the takeaways from that experiences. I think in India I would want a similar study. There they have different study, different countries coming together. Yes, they are smaller countries, I understand that, but they plan a big cohort, a larger study. So in India, if you talk to me about the future, we are having these studies, researches which are happening. No doubt the frequency, the intensity, everything has increased. But it would be really great to have a bigger cohort in India happening wherein we have at least 60-70 hundred cities, wherein we monitor these public places and come up with the data which can infer certain guidelines or for setting these standards in indoor air quality. That is what we are working on.

Simon: 7:02

That's what you're working on, so you're now an assistant professor in Delhi.

Priyanka: 7:07

Yes.

Simon: 7:08

Yes, and tell me about the society of the indoor environment or the society for indoor environment. Is that relatively new?

Priyanka: 7:19

Yes, it is seven years old now. It is a gamut of researchers, academicians, who have come together, who have been working for last 20 years almost more than two decades in this area and we are working towards building up of guidelines for indoor air quality in India and the idea is that, since it is a problem we know, we have to understand and convey it to the policymakers and the people that it causes harm to your health, it causes harm to your productivity and it needs to be addressed. So this is a very, very active. We have epidemiologists, we have microbiologists, professors, we have people who have been professors and then become joined the industry, but they are all linked through their research on indoor air quality. So this is a beautiful group of people who are without any profit making, without any intention of earning something. They are just following their passion for indoor air quality research in India.

Simon: 8:37

And is it located in a particular area or does it cover quite a large part of India? It is across India. Oh, brilliant.

Priyanka: 8:45

There are various chapters across India and mostly it is academic in nature. So we have people at IT Delhi, it Madras, it Bombay. We have people in National Environmental Engineering Research Institute who are there with us in IT Varangal, so mostly academicians and researchers. It is based on very heavily based on researchers.

Simon: 9:11

And I also see the Indian chapter of ASHRAE is very active as well, isn't it? That seems like it's really doing some good work.

Priyanka: 9:21

Good work there. Yeah, ashrae is a very old organisation. I remember when I started my research they were still there. Ashrae is working a lot. How SIE is different from ASHRAE would be. Ashrae is working towards urban built environment. They are mostly working on the standards and codes only. We are trying to see it from the people's perspective in terms of community perspective, citizen perspective. So we are not just looking at codes and standards for indoor air quality, india. We are also building capacity. We are conducting training programmes. We are having events. We had very good two international conferences. We organised Asian conference on indoor environmental quality in 2019 and 23. Recently also, we are organising a conclave. So the idea is to bring everyone whether it is ASHRAE, industry academy, everyone who is interested in or wanting to work towards these setting up of guidelines. That is the need of the R, because till the time we don't have guidelines, there is no way of reference to what is okay for us and what is not okay for us, so that is what we are looking at.

Simon: 10:42

I get the sense that India is a very exciting place to be involved in air quality at the moment and the built environment. There is a huge hunger to improve things. There is lots of low hanging fruit that you can make a big difference quickly if you get it right. Every time I speak to people from that region there seems to be a real drive and a hunger to make a difference. Is that a fair assessment?

Priyanka: 11:17

It is a very fair assessment Give me when I look at it and when I see on the LinkedIn some of my students or my fellow researchers. They are involved in finding solutions in terms of a process or a product. That doesn't matter, but they are looking at how we can and lot of innovations have come up. Lot of innovations, especially during the COVID time. When the world was grappling with COVID, we I think the entrepreneurs in India were budding with ideas and many of them have been really successful. So I am it's a very good time for India and I look forward to India actually making a difference. When we are talking about air quality, india will not see it as a problem. It will make sure that we have a solution to this problem.

Simon: 12:12

Did you see any risks being created when that innovation was happening? Particularly, we saw with things like air cleaners, a lot of reaching for solutions and innovation, and not only to solve problems, but more often than not it seemed to just differentiate yourself from somebody else making something very similar. There were all sorts of flavours, if you like, of air cleaning technology hitting the markets. Some more proved than others. Was that reflected in India as well, that mad scrabble to try and come up with products that would fix the problem.

Priyanka: 12:53

It started happening in 2016 after 2016, when I said that we had that smog episode in Delhi, suddenly everybody was concerned we need to buy a purifier. Everybody had a purifier. What technology, what it does Do you need it? You don't need it. Nobody talked about it. But it is winters and we are seeing pollution, so we need a purifier.

Priyanka: 13:19

Having said that, I am not against having air purifiers. Only thing is you should always identify the need for it. Either you are living in an environment where there is a marked difference between indoors and outdoors we are not at a place where you are at 5 micrograms per meter cube and suddenly you are moving to a 150 microgram meter cube. I am yet to know. That again is a research question. What will it do to a human body?

Priyanka: 13:53

I would say that I have a very orthodox view on this. I would prefer, if somebody is not diseased, somebody is not aged, a young child, a newborn, they may need it, but if you are supposed to move out in an environment which is much more higher in concentration of what you are keeping yourself into, your body will surely react in a manner which will hamper or trouble your immunity for sure. So I will not say that purifiers should not be used. Yes, they should be used, but specifically try to use them for people who need it. We really need to identify who needs it and then give it to them. Not stay in a silo and stay in a room which is 0 microgram per meter cube and not get out of the room. That is not practically possible. You will have to get out somewhere some workplace, some other place, the moment what happens. What I, with my personal experiences, have noticed is that if you keep yourself in a very sterile environment and then you are exposed to normal levels of pollution also, you tend to fall sick more often.

Simon: 15:14

That's a really interesting idea, that so, to tease that out a little bit your senses, or at least your senses there is an impact in significant changes of exposure as much as the chronic exposure risk. So there is potentially a balance to be found between going into a highly sterile work environment for eight hours of the day and then coming out into a much more polluted environment. There may be some physiological or epidemiological impacts on your health from that.

Priyanka: 15:54

Which will have longer duration, which will take a longer time to understand. But, having said that, your body does have this habit of developing resilience and I feel if I am outside for eight, 10 hours in an environment which is 100 microgram per meter cube and I am then in eight hours in zero, it will have an impact. It has had shown some impacts. I've tried that also. So it has impacted me in a one very personal incident that I would say. My daughter was three when I took her to Italy and we came back when she was five. So she was a perfectly healthy child, had no problems, respiratory issues. The moment we brought her back to India she had extreme bouts of wheezing and problems related to it and they were recurring. So the doctor and that was the time when I had finished my PhD so I tried to apply the practical knowledge that I gained during my doctoral research and removed more the carpets from the house and, believe me, all the episodes came down drastically.

Priyanka: 17:19

There was a lot of resistance from home. Obviously you cannot take off every piece of furniture and carpets from your home, but yes, having said that, the reason being India is a tropical country, we are staying. It is warm and it is a good breeding ground for moles and allergens. Vacuumers tend to absorb any kind of moisture or liquid and becomes a very important because vacuuming in India is not very common. We tend to broom. The general practice of brooming is followed in India and that now vacuum is becoming a practice in most of the households. But back then it was not.

Priyanka: 18:06

So every time you brew you tend to put certain particles again. They get settled on the carpet wool and with certain moisture it is absorbed in the carpet. That becomes a breeding ground for a lot of allergens. And that is what I had understood and tried to apply and it worked. So that is the reason that I had that kind of thought process that if I am sick I can I try to cure myself, not close myself into a room. But yes, if I am someone who is just a newborn or someone who has already pre-existing health conditions wherein the normal respiration is a problem, yes, the purifiers are required.

Simon: 18:57

I think that is a really fascinating area to take. I have to say I am conflicted. I think on one hand I can mentally understand that, the shocks to the system. You will have a physiological reaction to that. So if you are going from extremes to extremes, your body will react and we know that with air quality. We are very poor at sensing a slow deterioration of air quality around us. But if we walk into an environment that is significantly poorer, we will know it feels like we are walking into a poor air quality.

Simon: 19:36

So I think the human response to a change in environmental condition can be quite strong and quite physiological. There is an impact on you. So I walk into many homes that are suffering with condensation, damper mould and you feel ill by the time you are leaving. That difference in air quality is quite impactful. Yet people are living in that environment chronically for long periods of time and don't feel that same physiological response. But of course and I said this to Paweł Goczki a few weeks ago on the podcast there is this resilience conversation that is happening at the moment you were talking about it earlier with thermal comfort that we build up tolerance and resilience and that's a healthy human reaction.

Simon: 20:32

But there are some pollutants that you can't build a resilience or a tolerance to. They're just carcinogenic or bad for you toxicologically. So on one hand this is why I'm conflicted I can see that there's a physiological response to changes in conditions, but equally those more sterile environments or clean environments although your response stepping out of them might be poor that you could see them as safe havens. You could see them as respite or periods of time where you're not exposed to pollutants that are causing you harm long term. So it's an interesting one. I wonder if there's a balance there somewhere that there's an acute impact of moving from different environments to different environments, but ultimately chronically over your lifetime. If we're talking, dales, that the more time you can spend in those pollutant free environments, will that be long term, better for you? Or, long term, is there some negative impacts to that? So really, interesting one.

Priyanka: 21:44

That is why I said that we need cohorts.

Priyanka: 21:46

We need cohorts to establish this, because the idea is I understand the research, iq research has to be about identifying the right sources. So if I am in my room, let's say, people in India are buying purifiers for PM 10 and 2.5 years. They cater to the filtration technology or electrostatic precipitation, but that is mostly catering to PM 10, 2.5. Now let's assume that I have some allergies to the mold. There is some seepage in my house and there is some allergy. The fungi is growing, or molds are growing and there is some allergy.

Priyanka: 22:35

Do you think that that purifier is capable of handling the biorisols as well? That is, these are certain queries, or there are certain levels of benzene which are high in my microenvironment, but that purifier is not equipped to deal with it or remove it or take charge of it. The first step should be the source of washment of that particular microenvironment. For example, we are talking about our houses, that is where we spend most of the time, or our workplace. If we can identify the sources, if we can actually identify what could be the probable sources and how much percentage of those a person takes from those sources, it would help us do the risk assessment for those particular indore polygons. We just cannot go in here via that. I have put a purifier for PM 10, 2.5 and now it will treat me for even VOCs. It will also treat me for Problem solved.

Simon: 23:45

Yes, indeed yes. I think that was the really good work that Ben Jones and Max Sherman were doing around harm intensities and dahlies that are saying what pollutants do we find in homes in their particular study and what harm do those pollutants cause and what does the total harm look like? What does the impact on?

Priyanka: 24:05

health.

Simon: 24:05

Exactly Because in the homes in their study predominantly North American and European homes 33% of the pollutants was ethanol. But it is relatively benign compared to something like formaldehyde or particulate matter. Even if there's quite a lot of something, it might not mean it's doing you as much harm as the small amount of something that's in the environment. So it is a complex mix. You're absolutely right.

Priyanka: 24:38

It's a complex mix. Yes, so we need to identify the sources. We really need to understand what could be the possible sources. How much are they contributing to the indoor air? Is it that they can hang on to the particles? Then probably they become more harmful? That is something which really needs to be very intriguing. It's very intriguing and it should really be researched more.

Simon: 25:03

Now you touched on something, priyanka, that I made a note and I really wanted to come back to, and that was mold. Large parts of India are in the tropics. When you're in this part of the Northern Hemisphere, we tend to see condensation and mold as a uniquely cold, wet climate problem, and it really isn't. If you're in the tropics, it's completely the opposite. Building physics going on often, but nonetheless it still presents a really significant challenge, particularly to certain building types and environments. How big a problem is things like condensation and mold in areas like Delhi, for example? Is it a hot summer problem mostly, or is it a winter-driven problem, I'm guessing summer, where you've got high levels of humidity and lots of air conditioning going on?

Priyanka: 26:07

I'll give you an example also after this, but it's mostly we have summers. Summers in India are from May, june and a bit of July, and then it is just followed by the monsoon, all right. So that is the time summers are good. It's so terribly hot that even I don't think moles can survive. But that period of July and August, that is when the things start moving.

Priyanka: 26:40

So what happens is the buildings develop certain kind of seepage and it is very common in India to have it very common and a small patch probably a pipe leakage or ruck leakage, anything and it is left open.

Priyanka: 26:59

You know, there is a seepage, you see a wet patch and after sometime you start noticing some black patch and then that black patch goes into green. So it is normal for us to see, even specifically in the basements of the places that we also live in. It is a very common thing to see. Having said that, because the climate is such here that you know we are in air conditioned rooms, there is ample moisture during certain times of the year, which is an excellent breeding ground for these moles and allergies to happen, and that is the reason that the moment they become green and black, they become airborne. So we don't take it very seriously because it is all there, it is. You know, we are used to it, or probably our noses and our systems are used to it. But having it's not a joke, but it is a problem. And that is the reason when I said that we wanted to do bio-resol monitoring but we did not do it because the analysis, the monitoring is very complex.

Simon: 28:19

Yeah, it's an effort.

Priyanka: 28:21

We have a lot of sites. One of the examples that I wanted to give you in that study that we did in the pre-COVID time a lot of schools. There was some under construction schools, some area in the school which was undergoing construction. There were a lot of areas which had seepage. There were colleges which had some work going on or there is some leakage going on in the lab and the air conditioner duct had leaked. So these kind of things do happen regularly but somehow we tend to not take it seriously. Before COVID People have realized that. Yes, bio-resols are the next thing that we need to look at. Allergies in India are very common and probably we genetically are very blessed. We overcome that very easily Somehow. Probably that is what the resilience that I was talking about we will be coughing and wheezing for probably two, three days and then we'll be fine after a couple of medicines. But having said that, identifying these spots in public places is very common. It's very common.

Simon: 29:41

I mean there are several drivers for mould, obviously in dwellings, and one of them is physical water. So I'm guessing the monsoon season represents a very particular challenge just because of the volume of water that's landing on buildings. If there are leaks or gutters that aren't working or drainage systems that aren't performing, it will find those weaknesses. I imagine if you live in a home every monsoon season you know where it's going to be coming in. It's the same every year. It's that kind of here we go again. So there's that challenge which is really down to fabric maintenance and systems maintenance and improving the buildings to prevent moisture ingress or moisture production from systems within the building.

Simon: 30:32

But increasingly we're seeing in the tropics, in the more intensely air conditioned spaces, condensation driven by big vapor pressure differentials between inside and out.

Simon: 30:46

So those that don't know what that means where you have environments where you have high vapor loading so in the tropics in the monsoon season, very high levels of vapor loading outside the building and if you air conditioned the space aggressively inside, you end up with a very dry space and the building physics that come into play are very strong.

Simon: 31:09

So you get a lot of interstitial condensation, a lot of moisture being driven through the fabric and we have the opposite here. So we would have the opposite in the cold climates a very moisture loaded warm internal air in winter and very dry, cold air outside, and the same kind of impact happening. But ironically, what people I don't think grasp is that when you air condition a space aggressively inside, you reduce the surface temperatures and you can bring them into dew points through air conditioning. So any moisture that's ingressing from outside is hitting those cold surfaces and condensating. So there's a lot of really complex building physics going on in the tropics and I've had many conversations whether it's Australia in mining camps or Florida in Key West homes, timber frame type homes, anywhere where there's massive differences in moisture between inside and outside. That's a really specific engineering challenge.

Priyanka: 32:14

And in India only. I would say, simon, there is a lot of variations. This is what I'm talking of. Delhi, right. If you're talking about Mumbai, it rains cats and dogs when it rains in Mumbai, and it is a coastal city, so the level of moisture is anyways very high. So, for every particular city in South India, in Northern India, so I, when we talk about having certain interim guidelines, where we get stuck is how do you put every kind of variation under one umbrella? If I am talking about Northern India, so probably Northern India. If I'm talking Jammu, guashmi, that is very cold, more close to Ireland, probably.

Priyanka: 33:00

Then we go to the West. West is Gujarat. Gujarat is quite dry, it does not have a lot of cold and it is quite a dry state, and East is very cold, or it has a lot of rainfall. The maximum rainfall is in East. South has a different topography meteorology. So when we are talking about these comfort parameters, as we call it, it is very difficult to actually put them all together and say that India has this kind of climate. India does not have one kind of climate it cannot have. So we are anyways, even when we start for our cities work, also the monitoring. We divide the city into five parts. We tend to, as researchers, it is imbibed in us that we tend to divide the city into five parts Northern India, southern Delhi, southern Delhi, east Delhi, west Delhi and Central Delhi. So we have understood that everything cannot fall under the same roof.

Simon: 34:06

It goes to what we were saying at the beginning. We're talking about India here just because I think it's interesting for listeners outside of India to have a good understanding of the general context. But it's the same as talking to my colleagues in North America. We talk about the American context in general, but there's a huge difference between Vermont and Florida Keys. So particularly in large land masses it's very regionalised and therefore you need very specific state or area guidance and standards to deal with that, whereas if you're a small country like Ireland or even the UK, the difference in weather between regions is, we would argue, it's much rainier in cork than it is in Dublin, for example.

Simon: 35:01

But on the grand scheme of things we're a small little island off the Atlantic. It's pretty much the same. Even in France. They pretty much divide the country up into six regions because the weather in Brittany is going to be significantly different to the weather in Nice on the Mediterranean. So we have to take account of that. Obviously you did some interesting work around PM 2.5 and CO2 exposure in offices, didn't you in Delhi? Was that pre?

Simon: 35:38

or post COVID.

Priyanka: 35:40

It was pre, one was pre-COVID and the other. We had both. One was pre-COVID and one the one that we are talking is pre-COVID. So we tried to understand PM 2.5 and CO2. The findings of the study was that office spaces, specifically, we don't tend to fill the office spaces according to the ventilation rates. We don't use that as a parameter. That 10 CFM is for one person and then we should go accordingly. So the thing that we noticed was that probably in a space where 10 people should be sitting, it is already 15 who are sitting, who are seated, so the levels showed that it is CO2 as a reason. Pm 2.5, however, was more related to the location, geographic location of the offices. So if the office is in an area which is highly congested or which is high vehicular traffic around, or it is near a marketplace, the concentrations were more or less found to be because of the location of that place. Co2, yes, number of people we don't. You know, even in the houses, probably if we have 15-20 guests, we'll be all checked up into one room. We'll not even realize that you know somebody. After sometime you realize that you stop breathing. Then you realize something is a problem. Let's open the doors and windows. That's how it works out. So offices post COVID.

Priyanka: 37:21

When I did it for PM 2.5, the only difference that I noticed was that the offices were more aware. The building owners were more aware and they had certain principles in place as in what is their air exchange rate that should be maintained, how much is the CO2 levels in this particular area. They were ready, you know, they were willing to monitor, get their offices monitored Earlier. What we faced a problem was and that is why I say that awareness is an important issue the cinema halls, the restaurant owners. They were very susceptible, very apprehensive to let us monitor those places. They felt everybody knows air pollution. They felt that they will be, you know, brand shamed or and this is after when we told them that this data will not be diverse and will be confidential, everything.

Priyanka: 38:22

But then we realized that they really need to understand why we are doing this. Why is where we have stuck? So they didn't let us take the monitor inside the cinema hall, inside the restaurant and half of the cinema. We went for a movie. We put it in a purse. We tried to do that, but it didn't result in something specific. So I think we need to build capacity amongst building owners, also the people who own these places, that it is okay for us to monitor indoor air quality and it is not for certain harm, rather we can incentivize it. You know, like ITC hotel in Delhi or other hotels, they have used it as a as a thing to showcase that our hotel has a good indoor.

Simon: 39:22

It's a challenge, I think, with business is framing a business case for people to want to care about air quality and absenteeism, performance, attracting customers, retention of staff, whatever the whatever the drivers might be. But there's always that this battle between that and the risk or the potential stick element of this, where businesses may feel they may be highlighted or penalized or it may have a commercial impact if it's seen that they have poor air quality. And on one hand, I think that penalty is important if you want to drive change through regulations, if you want to force people slowly to improve incrementally. But it is a double-edged sword and it does create resistance and I've had many conversations, particularly with smaller business owners who, quite frankly, are struggling to afford to survive anyway and the risk of identifying poor performance of air quality might open them up to a cost they don't want. And I think you're always dealing with that.

Simon: 40:32

What do you do? You see many of these new building standards starting to get uphold, particularly in the workplace sector. I'm thinking of things like well standards, reset standards, lead, those kind of things, because you can't be what you can't see, and I think that one of the advantage of the pioneering buildings, although it's out of reach for a lot of buildings, it shows what can be done and it sets a benchmark to say this is what good air quality can look like, this is what a good environment can be, and are you starting to see that hit the ground in cities like Delhi? Those kind of standards?

Priyanka: 41:17

right. Green buildings are welcome change in India, yes, yes, because now people are aware they know what is lead platinum, they know what are the advantages. If I go for this kind of rating but again as I would say it is still niche I I would consider it if it is across colleges, across schools, across other buildings. That is when I would say that it is a very sustainable way of taking these ratings further. Having said that, these ratings, they put a certain number of points for indoor environmental quality. These are overall ratings that we are talking about, so we really need to emphasize that indoor environmental quality for any new building or in retrospect, has to be important, pertinent. Like IGBC has some nine ranking, so I'm very much in for this kind of standards because at least people are showing, taking a step forward for sustainable urban built environment.

Priyanka: 42:26

But having said that, yes, more emphasis needs to be put on indoor environmental quality their offices, which where, you know, my husband goes to the office and he says I was really very cold today. I don't know what temperature they had put the thermostat to and I was, you know, very cold. So we really need to take all these aspect seriously in terms of the productivity as well as the health of the employees and the people who are occupying there. So it is not just about the certification, it is about monitoring and following it up for all the various levels, like when we talk about indoor environmental quality, we are not just talking about air, we are talking about lighting, we are talking about acoustics, we are talking about thermal comfort.

Priyanka: 43:11

So everything.

Simon: 43:12

Once we take all the four quadrants into picture, I think that is when I would say that, yes, any kind of standard is a success so, taking everything that we've kind of discussed today, priyanka, if you were writing the rule book, if you're in charge right today, as I said, right, priyanka, now you're in charge, you're making the rules. What would a good roadmap look like for the residential sector, say, over the next five or ten years? What one of the things that you would like to see changed, let's just say in Delhi, to keep it focused in on your area?

Simon: 43:56

what would you like to see where does the work need to be focused over the next five or ten years if you were going to see some improvements in the residential indoor environment?

Priyanka: 44:07

so if I'm talking about residential indoor environment, I would like to have more emphasis on bio resource.

Priyanka: 44:14

Really, that is an area where we need more research to understand the dynamics of bio resource within different socio-economic, straight up different types of buildings that we have, because there is a lot of variation in terms of buildings that we are talking about. Secondly, if you give me the rule book, I would not want to constrain myself to Delhi. I would want to have more cities from Northern India develop a cohort, have the same methodology to monitor if it is residential spaces yeah, residential spaces to come up with a sufficient database for certain aspects which we can put it up as guidelines, because these researchers are good in silos but we are not able to infer anything out of them if we are not having a common. The way we have it in Europe, like I work on, health went or in way, or there are a lot of projects that they do a six city project and other projects. So something of that sort, if we can have it for India that's, that's interesting we have a bigger cohort do you think?

Priyanka: 45:35

bigger, go hot do you think?

Simon: 45:37

something like an indoor air quality observatory from France did that beautifully for many years. I know the UK is looking to try and do something similar, something central to pull together the research, pull together the data. Be a central repository for knowledge so that you can start to make so we can identify what are the sources.

Priyanka: 46:03

Probably we are so very in the in terms of variance. We have a lot of diversity. Let's identify what the diversity is about. Let's identify what. Probably what's the problem? Because now we are generalizing, we are we tend to take the outdoor thing and we generalize. We need to understand. These cohorts will probably give us a data which will help us identify at least three to four priority pollutants to finally see how it can be worked out whether it is because of the building materials that is being used, or is it is because the adhesive which are being used, or is it is because of furnishings which generally go into play.

Priyanka: 46:46

We have no idea yeah so a bigger cohort will actually. Now we have come up with a lot of pains which are no VOC pains, so does it matter? Does it work? Is it? Are people going for it? How many are going for it? If they are going for it, what is the level of TV OC in a in a house which was painted three years ago? Yeah, every year, if I can I have a data, is it? The concentrations are rising or decreasing.

Simon: 47:18

So there are a lot of research questions that we can throw, but yes, a bigger, go on bigger, bigger and taking your academic cat off for a minute and putting your lawmaker hat on or your social science hat on. Is there an action that that could happen in the residential environment that you would like to see in the next five to a change in behavior, a change in a change in a building standard, something that would create a decent outcome for people from an air quality perspective? What could, what could be put in place?

Priyanka: 47:49

community engagement. Okay, community engagement, some trainings, some community programs, awareness where people you know, I mentioned to you about that incident where a lady was burning which she was expecting and she was burning cam for all throughout in her life. And this is, we are all educated. We are all educated, we I'm not pointing it from that perspective, but, yes, awareness as to how, what should be done and what not to be done. If we can start creating that awareness in people, through people, it would have a better, bigger impact. So it would surely create ripples. And that is what I'm looking at, because one person, one organization, one government it will not work like that. It is our problem. We have to find the solution, but we first need to identify that it is our problem. So that is to be has to be through citizen-centric approach and community engagement. So that is what I would look at that's brilliant.

Simon: 48:57

Yeah, I like that a lot, priyanka, so much. Thanks so much for your time today. It's been brilliant talk. I'm glad you're saying thanks so much for taking the time to have a chat with me.