UK Volunteers Inhale Cleaning Product Fumes for Scientific Study

According to the BBC, 13 volunteers are taking part in scientific study that requires them to intentionally inhale fumes from various substances, including cleaning products.

The study, taking place at the University of Manchester in England, calls for participants to wear a mask that deliberately delivers polluted air for them to breathe, in an effort to better understand how such air affects the brain. While scientists understand well the effects of air pollution on the lungs and cardiovascular system, they are less informed about what it can do to the brain.

“Over the last 10 years, we have begun to see statistical associations between air pollution and a whole range of brain-related issues—all the way from how children learn, the way in which their cognition changes, to mental health and increased risks of dementia,” Dr. Ian Mudway, one of the scientists leading the study, told BBC. “What we’re trying to do in this study is to actually do experiments to understand why there’s an association, to find out what the underlying biological mechanisms are that link air pollution to adverse effects on the human brain.”

Along with fumes from cleaning products, the study is also examining how diesel exhaust, wood smoke, and cooking fumes affect the subjects. The researchers will draw blood samples and run cognitive tests on the participants, before and after administering the polluted air, to analyze its effects. The tests will expose subjects to an air sample for an hour each time they report to the lab, over a period of several months. Sometimes that sample will be clean air; sometimes it will be tainted. Participants are never told which type of sample they are breathing.

Professor Gordon McFiggans of the University of Manchester’s Centre for Atmospheric Science told the BBC, “There’s a lot of emerging evidence that indoor air pollution can actually be more harmful than outdoor air pollution. And of course, when you open a window or you have mechanical ventilation, you can get outdoor pollutants inside and also indoor pollutants on the outside, so there’s this whole wide range of exposures that everybody’s receiving.”

The BBC also reported that, while the study appears to involve very few people, it’s actually one of the largest of its kind, and its results are expected to be statistically significant due to the way the four pollutants and the clean air are being administered and analyzed.

One of the volunteers, Bryony Evens, told BBC she was glad to be a participant. “If they can get more data on these sorts of things, it feels like it’s a really worthwhile use of my time to help with the study like this,” she said.

While a firm date for the results was not announced, BBC stated that they were expected to be released “within the coming months.”

For more information about inside air quality (IAQ), check out 8 Things You Should Know About IAQ, as well as our free webinar replay, Rethink IAQ: How to Blend Science and Cleaning to Improve Indoor Air Quality in Facilities.