Centre of Climate and Environment Protection

Prof. Józef Pastuszka participated online in the 17th International Conference "Healthy Building Europe 2021", which took place on June 21-23 in Oslo, Norway.

He was a member of the Scientific Committee of the conference and a reviewer of three papers submitted for presentation at the conference. He also presented a paper as part of the oral presentation entitled "Bacterial and fungal aerosols in dwellings with domestic animals: preliminary result" (authors: Józef S. Pastuszka, Silesian University of Technology and Agnieszka Wlazło, Institute of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health). Attached are the 5 most important slides from my short presentation.

Prof. Józef Pastuszka also conducted almost an hour and a half workshop entitled Synergic Effects of the Exposure to Air Pollutants Indoors, devoted to the synergy effects observed in exposure to indoor air pollutants.

Below is the official report from the workshop sent to the conference organizers and a summary of the presentation.

Report from the Workshop 143: Synergic Effects of the Exposure to Air Pollutants Indoors 

Chair: Jozef Stefan Pastuszka, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, POLAND 

This workshop was divided into three sections:  

1. Synergic effects of airborne solid and biological particles and gaseous pollutants 
2. New tools in the analysis of health care of residents exposed to air pollutants 
3. Influence of climate change on the characteristics of air pollutants indoors 

During each section, Józef Pastuszka presented a short introduction characterizing the main scientific and practical problems based on the current knowledge. Then, the participants of this workshop discussed the updating of the presented data and indicated areas of new research needed. The suggestion of one of the participants to include exposure to the electric field in synergy with air pollutants seems to be particularly important. 

In concluding the workshop, all participants agree that extensive research into the various aspects of indoor synergy is strongly recommended. 

The following specific conclusions were also made: 

1. The mechanism of synergy between air pollutants is, generally speaking, still unknown. 
2. Our scientific experience and available literature indicate that probably no universal synergic mechanism exists.  
3. It seems that each case of the common influence of some, specific pollutants on human health needs an individual explanation.  
4. These synergies:  

• synergy of airborne pollutants inhaled  in very small doses,  
• synergy of aeroallergens and food allergens,  
• synergy between air pollutants and socio-economic factors  
• synergy between air pollutants and electric fields seem to be especially difficult for a detailed, quantitative explanation and needs future interdisciplinary studies.