Extreme heat and humidity are making life miserable for millions of people from the Midwest to the East Coast.
Temperatures well over 100 degrees are dangerous for the elderly and anyone living outside, but also for young children and pregnant women. And even if you seek shelter indoors with kids, you should also be thinking about the quality of the air inside.
, chief science officer at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, recently co-wrote a paper on for kids.
鈥淭he pandemic taught us that there are ways to really effectively clean indoor air so that kids can thrive indoors in a safe way,鈥� Burghart says.
6 questions with Dr. Lindsey Burghart
鈥奃oes heat factor into the quality of the air we breathe indoors?
鈥淎bsolutely. And as you said, it鈥檚 not just the temperature, but it鈥檚 the quality that really has the ability to affect children鈥檚 health. And the youngest children are the ones that we really need to be thinking about this with the most. But children of all ages are affected and just like us, children experience heat both indoors and outdoors.鈥�
鈥奣here are other triggers that might raise the levels of air pollution inside a building. What do you look at specifically?
鈥淲e talked for a long time about how important outdoor air quality is. There was the Clean Air Act way back in 1970 and it made a lot of really great gains at reducing the pollutants, some of the most common pollutants outdoors. And while we talk a lot about how this outdoor air quality is really important, actually, most of us spend more than 90% of our time inside.
鈥淎nd if we think about pregnancy and early childhood, think about where infants spend a lot of their time. It鈥檚 probably even more than that. They鈥檙e in childcare facilities. Kids are in schools. They鈥檙e in summer camp buildings. They鈥檙e in community centers. And in all these places, the air has particles, it has chemicals that can have a range of negative effects, not only on children鈥檚 health, but on their lifelong development. So it鈥檚 indoor sources of pollution that can affect your health. Think of things like composite wood furniture, synthetic carpets, PFAS that makes things water resistant. Things that were designed to make our lives more comfortable actually can affect our health.鈥�
鈥奡o the chemicals from furniture and carpets can leak into the air?
鈥淵eah, it depends on exactly what type of product we鈥檙e talking about. But there鈥檚 an array of different airborne chemicals. Some of them are known as volatile organic compounds. You may hear them described as VOCs, and depending on the product, they鈥檙e essentially off-gassed or released from these chemicals, and then they enter the air.鈥�
鈥奍 also see that gas stoves or insect infestations can cause problems with the indoor air.
鈥淵eah. Gas stoves, the problem comes from the off-gassing from the burning of the natural gas itself. There鈥檚 a great solution there, if possible, really is to just increase ventilation, turning on the hood and making sure the hood, if you have one, ventilates to the outdoors. And yes, a variety of pests, of dust, can enter the air. And if it contains like mites or dust mites or kind of byproducts of different insect infestations, those are other things that can trigger asthma in children.鈥�
鈥奧hy are babies or really young kids more vulnerable to breathing that kind of air inside?
鈥淲e鈥檙e all sensitive to these effects, but young children are especially sensitive for a number of reasons.
鈥淥ne, they鈥檙e still developing, whether it鈥檚 their brain, their lungs, their immune system, their endocrine system. They鈥檙e changing really rapidly. So they鈥檙e really sensitive to all of these exposures from the environment.
鈥淎nd not only are they more sensitive, but there鈥檚 actually differences in their physiology. They breathe more rapidly than we do. They inhale a larger volume of air relative to their body size. And in pregnancy, there鈥檚 also normal changes both hormonal and physical that lead to an increase in the amount of air being breathed in and out, making these populations more sensitive to all these exposures.鈥�
What are some of the solutions that we can think about that might make a difference in our homes?
鈥淭his is one of my favorite things to talk about because it鈥檚 a problem with some really actionable solutions on multiple levels. One is just by starting by knowing what鈥檚 in your home so you can actually monitor your air quality. Next, we can really all switch to, if we can, some safer products. So low-VOC cleaners. Requiring that the furnishings are things like flame retardant free, that they鈥檙e not able to off-gas, some of those harmful things that we talked about. And then there鈥檚 actually a group of air filters called HEPA air filters. These are portable and we can put them in childcare centers, in homes, in classrooms, and they鈥檙e all really effective and we鈥檙e removing the vast majority of these harmful particles from our indoor air environments.鈥�
This article was originally published on
Copyright 2025 WBUR