20 November 2023
Healthy indoor air is a fundamental necessity and poor indoor air quality is responsible for both economic costs and loss of life. New Zealand studies have indicated the presence of pollutants in homes. Preliminary findings from an ongoing study shows that indoor personal exposure of some chemicals appears high.
28 November 2022
Ventilation behaviour in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) is an under-researched area, despite the benefits that ventilation may have on occupant respiratory health. Most NZ homes rely on natural ventilation, i.e. window opening, which in turn relies on occupants to control ventilation. To understand how and to what extent people ventilate their homes, and ways in which ventilation can be improved, we will carry out a three-stage project.
18 October 2022
Improving ventilation in indoor spaces is a key strategy to prevent Covid-19 transmission, but it is unclear whether extensive messaging about this is changing behaviour or reducing transmission. Funded by the Ministry of Health, NIWA air quality researchers are carrying out research to understand ventilation behaviour and examine how well spaces used by our most vulnerable populations are, and could be, ventilated.
1 April 2021
ODINs (Outdoor Dust Information Node) are devices designed and built at NIWA that are designed to be deployed in grids of 25 to 100 units across a town. Each unit measures particulate matter levels (PM10 and PM2.5) every 10 minutes or faster, sending data to the cloud via the mobile phone network.