The Environmental Health Sciences group’s research focuses around two areas: Air Pollution and Pollutant Cycling Processes. Highlights include:

Air Pollution

• Advances in understanding airborne particulate matter, particularly processes influencing vehicle exhaust emissions, in street canyons and nanoparticles.
• First demonstration that the nucleation of particles in diluting engine exhaust plumes is the main determinant of street-air particle distributions.
• Development of methods to characterize airborne molecular clusters down to 1.8 nm, well-below the limits of conventional instrumentation.
• Use of organic source tracers for both primary particles and secondary organic aerosols.
• Laboratory and numerical modelling studies of atmospheric chemical processes. A revised rate constant for the ClO self-reaction is now accepted internationally. Work has quantified the interaction of halogen oxide and HOx radicals in the lower atmosphere.
• A major study of personal exposure to air toxics (U.S. Health Effects Institute, >$1m) elucidating the determinants of pollutant intake.

Pollutant Cycling Processes

• Pioneering use of chirality as a means of distinguishing sources of PCBs and demonstrated the key role of release from buildings as a continuing source of POPs in the environment.
• Significant contributions to quantifying human exposure pathways to “new” persistent organic pollutants such as PBDEs.
• Advancement of fundamental understanding of the utility of plants as agents for remediation of industrial pollution in wetlands.

Natural and Manufactured Nanoparticles

• Major advances in the quantification of natural aquatic colloids, nanoparticles, and nanoscale films
• Significant development and vaildation of fractionation and analytical methodologies for natural colloids and nanoparticles
• Coupling of techniques has led to a quantification of nanocolloid (<5 nm) structure which dominates trace pollutant speciation, and a variety of approaches are being used to understand the fate and behaviour of manufactured nanoparticles in aquatic systems with policy input to Defra.
• Quantification of the interactions of natural organic macromolecules and manufactured nanoparticles
• Transport and effects on microbial processes of nanoparticles