Air pollution exposure to young children is a serious concern globally since they are the most vulnerable to the health effects of traffic-related air pollution. In 2017, UNICEF revealed that almost 17 million children, younger than 1 year old, live in severely affected regions of the world where air pollution levels far exceed World Health Organisation prescribed limits of PM2.5 by about six times. Young children, especially those from poor socio-economic backgrounds, are most vulnerable to the impacts of toxic air pollutants. This webinar, presented by Ashish Sharma, will be focussed on this issue and a UKRI funded PhD research project, MAPE (Mitigating Air Pollution Exposure to the Young Children). 

Ash will outline the goal of this project and how they have experimentally quantified the differential exposure and mitigation strategies for young children while they are transported in different types of prams or trailers. They’ll go on to compare their exposure with that of adults as well as to highlight mitigation strategies via use of pram/trailer covers and facemasks. 

Most of these research findings have been published into some of the high-impact peer-reviewed research articles such as the Environment International or the Journal of Hazardous Materials. The research findings have been impactful and have been disseminated internationally via conferences, workshops and seminars and contributed to raise global community awareness on tackling health effects of young children's exposure. These have frequently featured at some of the most prestigious international digital media outlets such as the BBC, Telegraph, UK Daily mail, and The Huffington Post, to name a few.

Our speakers

Ashish Sharma is a civil and environmental engineer by professional training and his interests span across air pollution management, environmental sustainability, air filtration, young children exposure assessment and entrepreneurship. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and two master’s degrees from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) South Korea and Macquarie University Australia.

Presently he is an EPSRC funded PhD researcher and recently submitted his PhD dissertation at The University of Surrey's Global Centre of Clean Air Research (GCARE). His PhD research is based on an UK EPSRC funded project, Mitigating Air Pollution Exposure Assessment of Young Children (MAPE). His research aims to develop a knowledgebase and mitigation strategies for young children transport in prams and bike-trailers.         

In relation to his professional expertise, prior to joining the University of Surrey, he has worked for almost 5 years as an environmental sustainability researcher with some of the prestigious research groups overseas including Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (South Korea), The University of Toledo (USA), Macquarie University (Australia), and IIT Delhi (India).