Environment and Human Health
The challenge: what’s at stake?
Bioaerosols are found both outdoors and indoors and can pose serious health risks. The smallest particles can penetrate deep into the respiratory system, triggering allergies, asthma, infections, and other respiratory diseases.
Despite their impact on air quality, our ability to detect, identify, and monitor bioaerosols in real time remains limited. Currently, there are no standardised methods for assessing exposure risks, leaving regulators and policymakers without the data they need to make informed decisions. The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the need for advanced bioaerosol monitoring to understand how airborne pathogens spread in different environments, from hospitals to public transport to workplaces.
The need for technological breakthroughs
Defining safe exposure limits for bioaerosols is particularly complex due to:
The diverse and dynamic nature of bioaerosols, which vary in size, composition, and behaviour.
Limited data on dose-response relationships, making it unclear how different bioaerosols impact health.
Variability in environmental conditions, with factors such as ventilation, humidity, and air movement affecting bioaerosol concentration.
Loss of viability during sampling, which can alter the true composition of collected bioaerosols.
Techniques such as UV light fluorescence sensing, electrostatic samplers, and digital microfluidics offer promising solutions to distinguish between harmful and harmless bioaerosols, reducing unnecessary alarms while ensuring timely responses. However, further research is needed to scale up these technologies, ensuring they are cost-effective, accessible, and capable of real-time operation in a range of settings.
Why the Biodetection Technologies Hub?
In uniting expertise from four universities and external collaborators, the Hub is uniquely positioned to bridge critical knowledge gaps in bioaerosol research.
Key strengths include:
Cross-disciplinary bioaerosol research: The Hub builds on Cranfield’s leadership of the UKRI-funded BioAirNet, which has brought together several universities, Dstl, the UK Health Security Agency and the Environment Agency to demonstrate the need for a whole-systems approach to environmental monitoring, encompassing detection of biological and chemical hazards across air, soil and water.
Pioneering real-time detection: The University of Hertfordshire-developed Wideband Integrated Bioaerosol Sensor can detect and classify airborne biological particles like pollen, fungal spores and bacteria in real time. Licensed by the UK Ministry of Defence’s Ploughshare Innovations to two US companies, the WIBS is used for bioaerosol research by academic institutions worldwide, supporting public health impact studies.
Expertise in infection control and indoor ventilation: University of Leeds researchers have led large-scale studies into infection risk in public transport and how urban building design can minimise exposure to poor air quality.
Data-driven tools for smarter cities: University of Manchester are developing standardised ontologies and meta-data standards for bioaerosol collection, robust classifiers to identify bioaerosols types and user-centred data and software platforms, with the aim of embedding biodetection technologies within smart city and urban infrastructure initiatives.
How do we get there?
Through interdisciplinary collaboration with clinical partners, local authorities and government agencies, the Hub is exploring the development and application of real-time bioaerosol monitoring technologies to diverse real-world scenarios. These include infection control in healthcare settings, indoor air quality in public buildings, and monitoring the potential community health impacts of bioaerosol emissions from waste management and intensive agriculture facilities.
The Hub also intends to study the emerging and uncertain public health threat of antimicrobial resistance in bioaerosols.
