Two days ago, the Australian Academy of Science and Burnet Institute spearheaded a historic high-level event at the United Nations, bringing together more than 300 leaders to declare clean indoor air essential to health and wellbeing. The event took place on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly and was co-sponsored by France and Montenegro. Brown University’s School of Public Health and the OSLUV Project joined as co-convenors alongside the academy and Burnet Institute.
The global pledge, which has already been signed by more than 150 organisations, marked the first international initiative to formally recognise the importance of indoor air quality.
Australian Academy of Science chief executive Anna-Maria Arabia OAM said the academy was proud to collaborate with global leaders to galvanise action on indoor air quality.
“The science of indoor air quality is well understood, and solutions to address poor air quality are available. Political leadership is required to make every workplace safer and healthier, and to better prepare Australians when bushfires and pandemics impact our country,” Arabia said.
The UN event was built on the academy’s ongoing advocacy to reduce the negative impacts of airborne viruses and pollutants in indoor spaces. In its recent submission to the Productivity Commission’s review, the academy recommended establishing indoor air quality standards, supported by guidelines aligned with World Health Organization recommendations. Such measures aim to improve health, reduce absenteeism, and enhance performance across schools, childcare centres, hospitals, aged care settings and workplaces.
“If you don’t measure it, you can’t fix it. The collective cost of inaction in lost health and productivity reaches billions in Australia alone,” Arabia added.
Dr Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, senior director at the Global Biorisk Advisory Council, a division of ISSA, underscored the urgency of measurement and education. “At ISSA we believe safe breathable indoor air is fundamental to our health and wellbeing and should be a human right,” he said. “Shared indoor spaces are a risk to our health. We must promote the measurement of indoor air quality, because if we don’t measure, we can’t improve it or even maintain it when we get it right. The costs and impacts due to the lack of measuring indoor air quality is enormous, it’s huge.”
Macgregor-Skinner said technology to measure indoor air already exists and should be used to inform decision-making at every level. “We have the tools to measure indoor air quality and we should promote the use of indoor air quality monitors and help in educating everyone in understanding what those measurements mean so that people can make informed decisions,” he said.
Professor Lidia Morawska FAA, director of Thrive at Queensland University of Technology, and professor Bronwyn King AO, special advisor of clean air at Burnet Institute, also joined the Australian delegation. Morawska highlighted the disparity in standards, noting that Australian schools often lag behind even greenhouses and animal shelters in monitoring, ventilation, and filtration.
“Indoor air quality is a glaring gap in Australia’s approach to public health. A nationally coordinated process of reform is required to ensure all Australians benefit from cleaner indoor air,” Morawska said.
King emphasised that Australians spend 90 percent of their time indoors, yet schools, hospitals, workplaces and transport systems are not guaranteed clean air. “In fact, indoor air often contains hazards detrimental to health. The good news is practical solutions already exist. Uplifting indoor air quality presents an extraordinary opportunity to improve health for all,” she said.
For Macgregor-Skinner, the global pledge signals a turning point. “The signing of a global pledge formally recognises that we need to define what is safe breathable indoor air for everyone and the need to reach out to those that you don’t usually work with and create multidisciplinary teams that can solve problems and understand building science,” he said. “We are now taking a similar path for setting standards and improving indoor air quality as was taken for food safety or safe drinking water. There are a lot of parallels and lessons learned. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We can move quickly and ensure we have the support of many nations and thousands of organisations.”
The event marked the first time the global indoor air community convened at the United Nations, highlighting a critical gap in public health frameworks and the urgent need for reform.
