A single hedge by the roadside can change how deeply a person breathes in toxic metals from traffic fumes. This project builds a computer model that tracks pollution particles from the neighbourhood air, through a person's lungs, and into individual cells, to predict exactly how different types of particles damage health. The problem is that current pollution monitoring measures average air quality across a city, not what a specific person inhales in their immediate 20-metre micro-environment. The researchers will test their model against real data from 80 participants wearing personal pollution and heart-lung monitors. If successful, the model will allow city planners and health officials to test mitigation strategies—such as planting hedges in specific locations or prescribing preventive medication for asthmatics—before implementing them. The work is fundamentally about linking the physics of particle movement to the biology of cell damage, but its direct output will be a practical tool for designing urban green infrastructure that measurably reduces personal exposure to pollution.
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To assess the impact of pollution on personal health in outdoor/indoor urban environments, we will develop a physics-based multi-scale approach across biological length scales from the cell, lung, person (surrounded by green infrastructure) up to the neighbourhood scale. We will examine the biophysical components of pollutants that determine their cellular fate, their potential for cell and tissue damage and how this relates to health outcomes. We will use airway models to assess particle deposition and effects on people's health as well as trace the pollution particles through an individual person down to the cellular level. The focus of the analysis will be on the immediate micro-environment (~20m) around a person. The integrated modelling will also represent various intervention scenarios (e.g. roadside hedges or medication for at-risk people such as asthmatics) to assess reduced exposure and corresponding changes in health outcomes. These biologic parameters of exposure will be integrated with the cardio-respiratory response to pollution in 80 participants using a combination of cardio-respiratory, physical activity and personal fine particles exposure monitors. We will numerically model the pollution and air flows at the neighbourhood scale and apply an approach centred on the impact of pollution on health to all aspects of modelling, sensor placement and management of the environment. Thus, any mitigation strategies can be designed to minimize the impact of pollution on health. We will model the dispersion of particles and their micro-physics within the neighbourhood with an emphasis on green infrastructure and their ability to mitigate pollution e.g. hedges can reduce heavy metal pollution. We will examine the physical effects and functional chemistry of the metals and organic components of particles at the ultracellular level to determine their interference to cell metabolism and health. We will use modelling to predict the outcomes of cell fate, so that we can back propagate biological potential of pollution particles (say) through to the individual and into the neighbourhood scale. Thus, modelling will be key at each length scale.
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