IOC Seed Funding to Study Classroom Air Quality Featured on BU SPH

Patricia Fabian, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Associate Director at the Institute for Global Sustainability, was recently featured in a BU SPH article highlighting her work on air quality in Boston Public School (BPS) classrooms.

During her 2022-2023 sabbatical, Professor Fabian created a research partnership with the Boston Public Schools. She received $10,000 in seed funding from the Initiative on Cities and a $20,000 Established Investigator Innovation Award from the idea hub (School of Public Health’s innovation accelerator) to jumpstart the research into collecting air quality data from BPS’s indoor air quality sensors that were installed in 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic. The sensors measure temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and inhalable particulate matter. She worked to create this fact sheet to explain the sensor research to the BPS community.

Fabian hopes this unique dataset and partnership will provide crucial information to evaluate and reform past health interventions and find innovative solutions to poor air quality.