Environmental Health Grant

Evaluation of the effectiveness of HEPA filters in preventing asthma deterioration, during periods of extreme particulate matter pollution from landscape fires or wood heaters

• The evidence is well established around the effectiveness of HEPA filters to improve air quality when used according to recommendations and adapted to specific circumstances. But how, and how well, do they result in improvements in health outcomes? Do they improve asthma control, compared to people who don’t use them? Do they help prevent flare-ups and urgent healthcare use, quality of life? To what extent?
• Please note: Whilst this focus area is needed to support the case to increase HEPA filter accessibility, especially for those who face difficulty accessing them, Asthma Australia would welcome applications that included other air pollution sources, such as noxious gases and airborne viruses

Implementation and evaluation of an air quality monitoring and mitigation protocol for Australian schools and early childhood education to prevent respiratory condition exacerbation during landscape fire or wood heater related high pollution periods 

• Education providers need current and localised air pollution information to take action to protect staff and students. They need to be able to identify and implement actions to reduce the risks associated with the hazardous pollution such as staying indoors, moving to safer areas, postponing outdoor activities or events, or deploying air cleaners in indoor spaces. In Australia, state based environmental agencies  monitor and publish air quality data, however, this information alone does not support decision makers in the institutions where our most vulnerable community members spend their time. Further, many communities lack local air quality information. What information is critical for schools to decide what to do to protect students? How does weather impact those decisions? How can we develop risk profiles for students? 
• It is hoped that this initiative will include investigations into the range of options and roles of local air quality monitoring, as well as the response mechanisms conceivable in periods of increased air pollution 

• This focus area is based on findings consistent across Asthma Australia’s and the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s bushfire smoke surveys which indicated that people who reported using their preventer before the bushfires were more likely to report symptoms and deterioration.
• What would we like to know more about the relationship between exposure and health impact? What co-factors are associated with these relationships? Are people who also use medicines for other chronic diseases more or less likely to report symptoms during exposure periods?
• What do we know about the mechanism of injury during PM 2.5 high pollution periods? What treatment options potentially mediate this mechanism?
• What should I do if smoke is a trigger, I’m already using an inhaled preventer and I can’t avoid the smoke?

• We understand that a number of locations in Australia have started trialling wood heater replacement schemes. We want to support these efforts and analysis of their implementation to ensure that such efforts are taken up more widely, even universally.
• ‘Effectiveness’ may be considered expansively, from a user, economic and health outcome perspective
• What are the conditions that enable the successful implementation of a woodheater replacement scheme? What data or evidence explains these conditions? What are the decision thresholds for consumers (eg based on discrete choice experiment methods)? What are the economic models that are going to be influential for policy makers (eg cost/benefit analysis, ? What is the value proposition and exchange for industry?