MMAP-VEX is a European Union Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement 895851 from July 2020 to July 2023. The project is jointly-hosted by the University of Birmingham, School of Geography Earth and Environmental Science, U.K and Harvard University, School of Public Health, USA with Prof. Bill Bloss, Prof. Petros Koutrakis and Prof. Roy Harrison as collaborators.
MMAP-VEX project aims to investigate how the outdoor air quality is a determinable factor of health and personal air pollution exposure in passenger cars. MMAP-VEX will perform concurrent measurements of air pollutants within vehicles and directly outside/ambient of multiple air pollutants such as concentrations of PM10, PM2.5, PM1 (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 10, 2.5 and 1 µm, respectively), ultrafine particles (UFP, with aerodynamic diameter < 300 nm), lung surface deposited area (LSDA), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), carbon dioxide (CO2) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), which are critical species in terms of air pollution exposure comparisons. The concurrent measurements will take place under different cabin air filters and ventilation settings on urban, sub-urban and rural roads. The insights from these experiments, while significant themselves, will then be used to develop modelling techniques, which, with the use of the state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, will be trained in order to estimate personal exposure inside vehicle cabins under different conditions such as cold/hot weather, air conditioning on/off or driving in urban/rural roads. MMAP-VEX research is critical for effective indoor air quality management policies, alternative, greener commuting strategies and control of daily exposure to air pollution.
Third most important microenvironment other than home and workplace.
56% of the European population uses cars as a main transportation option on a daily basis.
Exposure to air pollution inside cars accounts for up to 20% of the daily exposure to PM2.5 and NO2.
Route choice can reduce in-vehicle exposure by factors of 1.2–2.0 and 0.4–0.5 for PM2.5 and NO2, respectively but changes journey time and emissions.
Ratio of in-vehicle to on-road particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide under different ventilation settings and cabin filters. Red dashed line shows the 1:1 ratio.
If you want to understand more about how your cabin filters can reduce your exposure inside your cars see the video below
Instruments and tubing for in vehicle NO2, PM2.5, CO2 and VOC under real world driving conditions
Real-time monitoring of in-vehicle air quality
Peugeot 108: smallest car tested
Saab 9-3 Aero: Largest car tested
Testing Indoor air purifier
In-vehicle air quality behind high emitters