Pregnant women, new-born babies, and asthmatic teenagers in Delhi will wear personal monitors that measure the polluted air they actually breathe as they go about their daily lives. Current air quality studies rely on fixed monitoring stations and satellite data, which miss the fine-scale, personal exposure that matters most for health. This project addresses a critical gap: no one has yet combined real-time personal pollution measurements with breathing effort and biological markers in these particularly vulnerable groups—whose higher breathing rates relative to body weight and developing immune systems put them at greater risk. If successful, DAPHNE will produce the first integrated picture of how Delhi’s air pollution directly affects asthma attacks in adolescents and pregnancy outcomes. The results could reshape how cities design interventions—not just in Delhi, but globally. A stakeholder panel of Indian and UK experts will translate the findings into practical mitigation strategies, potentially influencing traffic management, school timings, or public health advice. The wearable monitoring technology itself could become a template for exposure studies in other polluted megacities.
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DAPHNE is a consortium of doctors, scientists and technologists drawn from 9 institutions (six in India and three in the UK), to study the effect of air pollution in the city of Delhi on the health of pregnant mothers and their new-born children, and asthmatic adolescents. This group is particularly vulnerable because of their greater intake of air with respect to the body weight, and an underdeveloped immunity system; and, also, the adolescents have greater outdoor exposure when travelling to school and during play times. In addition to estimating the amount of suspended particles and gaseous pollution inhaled by subjects using existing networks of stationary air quality monitors and satellite data, the project introduces novel devices worn on the person to measure exposure to suspended particles and noxious gases, and monitor their breathing rate and breathing effort when the subjects are out and about in their everyday lives. This will estimate the impact of air pollution on their asthma and how different levels of activity could contribute to changes in their condition. Biomarkers in samples of blood and urine taken from the subjects will be used as further evidence to estimate the effects of air pollution on changes in their well-being. Finally, a panel of stakeholders drawn from India and the UK will advise on how best the research results can be translated into interventions to help mitigate the effects for the benefit of the citizens of Delhi in the first instance, with potential for world-wide application in the future.
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