During the fourth quarter of 2025, KU Leuven participated in different prestigious international conferences, like the Clean Indoor Air for All Conference, the European Public Health Conference, and the BelTox-BEMS Annual Scientific Meeting, to disseminate preliminary results from the LEARN project cohorts at European schools.
These preliminary results on children’s exposure to indoor air pollutants come from the chemical analysis of air samples from the Belgian cohort, which involved 210 participants, and will be consolidated with the data from the ongoing cohorts in Denmark and Greece.
Clean Indoor Air for All Conference 2025
On 14 October 2025, Wai Kei Chu, PhD researcher at the Centre of Environment and Health of KU Leuven, gave an oral presentation at the Clean Indoor Air for All Conference 2025, organised by the Clean Air Society of Australia and New Zealand (CASANZ) in Melbourne, Australia.
His presentation was about “Indoor air quality and the impact of air purifiers in primary school classrooms in Belgium“, as part of the LEARN project cohorts, and concluded that:
- CO2 levels increased in all classrooms during the school day, highlighting inadequate ventilation as an area of concern.
- The intervention of an air purifier showed potential to reduce the particle number concentration of UltraFine Particles (UFPs).
European Public Health Conference 2025
From 12 to 14 November 2025, Wai Kei Chu presented a poster at the 18th European Public Health Conference 2025, organised by the European Public Health Association in Helsinki, Finland.
The poster, titled “A systematic review of biomonitoring of children’s indoor air exposure in schools and homes“, compiled the current biomonitoring and environmental approaches used to assess children’s exposure to selected indoor air pollutants in school and home environments in studies from 53 countries.
The findings from KU Leuven’s researchers Wai Kei Chu, Thomas Celis, Lama Said, Peter Hoet, and Jeroen Vanoirbeek revealed gaps in harmonised approaches and call for standardisation and integration of biological and environmental monitoring to better understand children’s indoor air exposures.
Source: WK Chu, T Celis, L Said, P Hoet, J Vanoirbeek, A systematic review of biomonitoring of children’s indoor air exposure in schools and homes, European Journal of Public Health, Volume 35, Issue Supplement_4, October 2025, ckaf161.844, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckaf161.844
BelTox Annual Scientific Meeting 2025
On 4 December 2025, Wai Kei Chu presented a poster at the BelTox-BEMS Annual Scientific Meeting 2025, jointly organised in Brussels by the Belgian Society of Toxicology and Ecotoxicology (BelTox) and the Belgian Environmental Mutagen Society (BEMS), under the theme ‘Unmasking Microplastics: Impacts, Challenges and Implications for (Eco)Toxicology’.
The poster, titled “Integrating environmental and biological monitoring of children under a novel air purification intervention in primary schools: A study protocol“, showed procedures and lessons learned from the indoor air quality cohorts at schools in Belgium, conducted by the teams from Hasselt University and KU Leuven, including school participation, sampling equipment and set-up, cross-over study design, and practical challenges encountered.
The LEARN project is a Horizon Europe project meant to monitor and evaluate indoor air quality at schools around Europe and its impact on children’s health. Our main goal is to develop and deploy novel sensors that can detect possibly harmful air pollutants, as well as advanced biosensors and optimised air remediation strategies. Find out more about our EU-funded project!
