A team of researchers from nine institutes of India and the United Kingdom, led by the University of Edinburgh will examine links between long-term exposure to air pollution and health over a four-year period. They will use tiny sensors attached to the body to find out the amount of pollutant a Delhiite inhales everyday.
“The Delhi Air Pollution: Health and Effects (DAPHNE) project brings together best-in-class researchers from India
and the UK to address the pressing problem of the health effects of sustained exposure to high levels of air pollution. We believe this innovative research, funded by the UK research councils over the past 15 years, could eventually
help millions of people in Delhi and countless other global cities,” Professor D K Arvind of the University of
Edinburgh, who is leading the study, said.
The multidisciplinary team of researchers includes computer scientists, doctors and exposure scientists. According to a statement by the University of Edinburgh, air pollution levels in Delhi reached more than 16 times the safe limit, prompting the local government to declare an emergency situation. The DAPHNE project involves 760 pregnant women, who will wear the air pollution monitors attached as adhesive patches and scientists will record the health of the mothers and their children following birth. The researchers will also focus on 360 young people with asthma in order to examine the level of exercise they can tolerate amid air pollution. A UNICEF research paper released on Wednesday shows that air pollution, like inadequate nutrition and stimulation, and exposure to violence during the critical first 1,000 days of life, can impact children’s early childhood development by affecting their growing brains.
DAPHNE researchers would use battery-powered respiratory monitors, known as ‘RESpecks’ and the air pollution monitors, called ‘AIRSpecks’, utilise ‘Speckled Computing’, a technology being pioneered by scientists at the University of Edinburgh.”‘Specks’ are tiny devices that can be placed on everyday objects, and people, in order to sense, compute and communicate data. In the DAPHNE project, these sensors transmit each person’s data wireless to their mobile phone, enabling the user to monitor their individual exposure to pollution,” reads the University of Edinburgh statement.
The Indian partners include Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, AIIMS, Delhi, Delhi University College of Medical
Sciences, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur and INCLEN, which is a ‘not for profit’ research organisation conducting multi-disciplinary studies on high priority global health issues. The UK Partners include the University of Edinburgh (Centre for Speckled Computing, School of Informatics and Centre for Cardiovascular Science), Imperial College (National Chest and Heart Institute) and the Institute for Occupational Medicine.
