Environmental Research
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The Environmental Research Group (ERG), part of the School of Biomedical Sciences at King's College London, is a leading provider of air quality information and research in the UK. The Group has four research teams: Monitoring, Modelling, Lung Biology and Science Policy.
Investigators in ERG combine air pollution science, toxicology and epidemiology to determine the impacts of air pollution on health and the causal factors. We work closely with those responsible for air quality management to support policies and actions to minimise air pollution health effects.
The co-ordination of air quality monitoring sites on a regional scale has many benefits, including consistent Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) procedures, a single regional data source, knowledge and equipment sharing.
Prof Kelly's research focuses on how the lung defends itself from these challenges and why, for some of us, these defences sometimes fail. Much of his current work examines the oxidant mechanisms underlying air pollution-induced lung injury.
Prof Kelly is trying to understand how pollutants such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide and tiny traffic-related particles interact with the lung and initiate injury.
As well as conducting studies in healthy volunteers he is particularly interested in how these events differ between healthy subjects and those with pre-existing airways disease such as asthma. The primary focus of these studies relates to the events occurring within the respiratory tract lining fluid (RTLF) compartment of the lung. This thin layer of fluid, which lines the surface of the lung, represents the first and maybe most important line of defence against inspired pollutants. Prof Kelly suspects that oxidant/antioxidant events occurring in the RTLF are pivotal to understanding the impact of air pollution on the lung. Since many respiratory diseases involve inflammation, RTLF antioxidants have also the potential to defend the lung against free radicals released by invading white blood cells.
In collaboration with clinical colleagues at the University of Umea in Sweden, Prof Kelly utilises bronchoscopy and bronchoalveolar lavage procedures to investigate the nature of oxidant/antioxidant interactions occurring in the RTLF compartment. These studies, in combination with cell culture and in vitro approaches, have allowed Prof Kelly and colleagues to develop an understanding of the time-course of events in the airways following oxidative challenge.
These findings have led them to realise the need to obtain a better understanding of how diet and genotype interact to determine an individual's complement of RTLF antioxidants. Prof Kelly and colleagues have obtained data on the antioxidant defence network within RTLF of healthy individuals and are investigating how diet and genetic background can influence this.
In addition to these chamber-based volunteer studies, Prof Kelly and colleagues are taking advantage of the natural experiments that are taking place in London following the introduction of traffic management schemes such as the Congestion Charging Scheme (CCS) and the Low Emission Zone (LEZ). Both schemes have the potential to influence vehicle emissions and thus air quality in London. With colleagues in Imperial College, St George's and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Prof Kelly is determining if this is the case and if they can demonstrate a health benefit of these traffic intervention schemes.
Much of this research is focused on the source apportionment of PM10 concentrations; again using a network perspective to create simple models to separate trends in primary PM concentrations from sources in London from changes in PM imported from outside the city; from Europe and beyond. This led to the important finding that primary PM10 in London has increased since 1998 despite technological and policy measures to abate vehicle tailpipe emissions (Fuller and Green, 2006). These apportionment techniques can also be applied to quantify the local impacts of PM arising from sources that are not currently represented in emissions inventories including construction activity (Fuller and Green, 2004), waste management and more recent measurement programmes have focused on PM10 from biomass burning.
Dr Fuller's studies of PM concentrations in residential streets around six urban waste management sites have led to development of further apportionment techniques to support the regulatory activities of the Environment Agency and local authorities. New measurement of PM chemical composition is providing improved opportunities to characterise PM10 by source leading to a better understanding of ambient air pollution concentrations (Green and Fuller, 2009) and their sources. Other recent work has included the incorporation of the GUM measurement approaches to uncertainty assessment into source apportionment models.
Through close working with toxicologists, clinicians and epidemiologists it has been possible to promote the best use of air pollution measurements in health studies (Atkinson et al, 2010 for example) working towards a better characterisation of pollutant exposure.
The exposure outputs from ERG's air quality model continue to be used widely within and outside the MRC centre and include exposure to NO2 and PM around Heathrow, Particle Matter (PM) and Oxidative Potential (OP) exposure in London and NO2 and PM in London for the HEI. ERG's emissions inventory capability is also providing inputs to the EU projects MEGAPOLI and BRIDGE. Dr Beevers has undertaken research which assesses the impact on air pollution of measures to tackle climate change, which was used as part of the evidence provided at the Copenhagen climate change conference.
