Breathe Easy: Safeguarding Children's Growing Lungs from Indoor Air Pollution

Asthma affects over nine percent of children and adolescents in the European Union, and its prevalence is closely linked to air quality, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA). The same report found that in 2021, 97 percent of the EU’s urban population was exposed to PM2.5 concentrations exceeding World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines. In fact, air pollution remains the leading environmental health threat in Europe, contributing to at least 239,000 premature deaths annually due to exposure to PM2.5 above recommended limits.

While policy discussions often centre on outdoor air quality, indoor environments are often overlooked despite being equally critical. Europeans spend an average of 90% of their time indoors where pollution levels indoors can be two to three times higher than those recorded outdoors. Research also suggests that one-third of new asthma cases each year could be prevented if ambient air pollution were reduced to the lowest recorded levels in scientific literature. Given that Europeans spend the vast majority of their time indoors, improving indoor air quality could have an even greater impact on reducing respiratory health issues—particularly for children—than addressing outdoor pollution alone.

In this context, Srebrnjak’s Children’s Hospital, as well as the SynAir-G and EDIAQI projects are organising the “Breathe Easy: Safeguarding Children's Growing Lungs from Indoor Air Pollution”, to explore:

• The current scientific understanding of how indoor air pollution affects lung function development and the onset of asthma in children.
• The most effective interventions to address childhood respiratory issues—should action be medical, policy-driven, or a combination of both?
• Ongoing European research on indoor air quality and children's respiratory health, and how it can inform policy at the EU level.