Collaborative Research: Chemical and biological determinants of indoor air quality: Linking indoor air and surface chemistry with microbial emissions and toxicity

About This Grant

Indoor air quality is affected by a variety of chemical and biological factors. For example, building materials and furniture surfaces inside homes are sources, sinks, and temporary reservoirs for chemicals. At the same time, microbes such as bacteria, viruses and fungi can grow on these surfaces. Usually, researchers study the chemical factors and biological factors affecting air quality separately. This project will investigate them in combination by exploring, for example, how chemical compositions on surfaces or in the surrounding air can trigger changes in the way microbes grow on various surfaces typically found in a home. By studying the chemical and biological factors together, the project will produce results that can inform air quality guidelines to improve indoor environmental quality. The project will also introduce local middle school students to air quality issues by helping them build environmental sensors that will be deployed on campus to monitor environmental conditions. This project will determine how perturbations to indoor surface chemical composition and indoor air pollutant distribution impact microbial gene expression and microbial volatile organic compound (mVOC) emissions, to better understand and mitigate the chemical and biological drivers of poor indoor air quality. Laboratory chamber experiments, volatile organic compound measurements, and microbial gene expression analysis will be performed to support the following research objectives: (1) Establish how building material surface composition influences microbial gene expression and emissions; and (2) Build networks to connect environmental pollutant exposures to microbial gene expression and emissions. This research will expand knowledge in indoor chemistry and microbiology by revealing how indoor surface and air composition influence indoor microbial communities, and vice-versa. The study will use RNA sequencing to connect microbial community metabolism with surface chemical composition and pollutant exposure in the built environment. Indoor environmental conditions, especially increased humidity in non-climate-controlled homes, could impact the chemical composition of indoor material surfaces and thus alter fluxes of chemicals between surfaces and air, as well as create favorable growth conditions for microbes. This study will advance our fundamental understanding of the connection between surface conditions and pollutant exposures, microbial gene expression, and mVOCs in the evolving indoor environment. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.