Classroom Air Quality UQ Study Fresh
STEM Punks was excited to visit the University of Queensland (UQ) to speak with members of the Study Fresh Project Team. Dr Stephen Snow is the team leader of the Study Fresh Project and explained that the project was a UQ initiative and made possible through funding from the Office of the Queensland Chief Scientist. The purpose of the Study Fresh Project is to improve the capacity of Queensland students to thrive at school by gathering data on the indoor air quality of classrooms. Stephen explained, “There can be issues of inadequate ventilation where Carbon Dioxide (CO2) rises from people breathing out and CO2 is a really good indicator of the likely presence of other indoor air pollutants. The reason we have to care about indoor air quality is because poor indoor air quality and poor ventilation leads to lower cognitive performance and lower performance at sustained attention tasks. It’s been correlated to poor academic performance and so it’s quite a big issue, just nobody’s measuring it.” The Study Fresh Project actively collaborates with QLD schools, to engage students as citizen scientists, to measure their school classroom’s air quality. Stephen continued, “we’ve got two options. We can deploy these Study Fresh loggers into classrooms. They (students) monitor CO2
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