Air Pollution Exposure Across Indoor and Urban Environments: Implications for Public Health, Vulnerable Populations, and Preventive Interventions

Air pollution remains an important public health issue and is linked to a wide range of adverse health outcomes, including respiratory diseases, cardiovascular effects, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and reduced wellbeing. Although outdoor air pollution has been widely studied, people spend most of their time indoors and move through a variety of urban microenvironments each day — including homes, schools, workplaces, transport settings, and streets close to traffic and other emission sources. As a result, personal exposure is shaped not only by ambient pollution levels but also by ventilation, occupancy, building characteristics, indoor sources, travel behaviour, and the timing and duration of daily activities.

These exposure patterns are especially important for vulnerable populations such as children, older adults, people with pre-existing health conditions, and workers in high-exposure settings. In many cases, short-range spatial variation and differences between indoor and outdoor environments can lead to meaningful differences in the doses people receive, even within the same city or neighbourhood. There is therefore a clear need for research that improves understanding of where, when, and why harmful exposures occur — and how this evidence can be translated into practical interventions and public health action.

This Research Topic aims to bring together studies that examine air pollution exposure across indoor and urban environments and explore the implications for public health. The collection seeks to advance understanding of exposure in everyday settings, identify the groups and contexts at greatest risk, and highlight preventive strategies that can reduce exposure and support healthier environments. It also aims to encourage work that connects measurement and modelling with intervention design, health evidence, and policy relevance, so that research findings can better inform real-world decision making.

Areas of interest include, but not limited to:
• Exposure assessment;
• Monitoring approaches;
• Health impacts of indoor and outdoor pollutants;
• School and workplace exposure;
• Household air quality;
• Commuting-related exposure;
• Intervention strategies such as ventilation, filtration, air cleaning, and urban greening.