About the Project

Project Overview

Building design, operation and occupation patterns impact our exposure to microbes. US housing stock, however, was not designed, nor does it operate to control hazardous or beneficial microbial exposures. Understanding and acting upon the nexus between microbial communities, human health, and the built environment is a primary challenge toward improving human well-being.

The Breathe Haven team seeks to develop a quantitative metric that indicates the human respiratory health risks or benefits of a home's microbiome. Development of the Healthy Building Microbiome Index (HBMI) starts with a cohort of homes from locations in Southern, CT USA. Healthy versus unhealthy status will be assigned from direct occupant respiratory health assessments including spirometry, breath metabolomics, and respiratory questionnaires. Occupant health status is paired with intensive building microbiome and building feature characterization using a variety of statistical, machine learning, and deep learning computational methods to produce our index. Such an index can be used to promote rational approaches for building design and operation that improve our well-being.