The most comprehensive urban air quality study undertaken in the southern hemisphere will be led by QUT researchers.
Professor Lidia Morawska, director of the ILAQH, was just awarded a $889,000 project to investigate the impact of urban ultrafine particles in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Auckland.
Intensive monitoring will be conducted with air-monitoring sensors placed on buses and drones collecting data from the air.
Professor Morawska (pictured above with chief investigator Professor Zoran Ristovski) said there was an “acute deficiency” of knowledge about the impact of ultrafine particles.
“They pose a health risk because they penetrate deeper into the lung than larger particles, translocate to the blood system and can cause a variety of diseases,” she said.
The study is one of three QUT-based research projects announced on the 11 April 2019 in the latest funding from the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects Scheme.