(Press Release) SEOUL Korea, November 29, 2017- Awair, the creators of devices that track air quality in homes, today announces its partnership with Brown University’s Baby Imaging Lab to collaborate on a National Institute of Health (NIH)-sponsored project called “Resonance”, a longitudinal study that focuses on understanding how a wide variety of environmental exposures affect child neurodevelopment. The project is one of the several cohorts participating in the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program, a seven-year initiative that aims to understand the effects of environmental exposures on child health and development.
The Baby Imaging Lab will be placing units of Awair Glow in the homes of approximately 1,100 expecting mothers and mothers with infants between 3 months and 5 years of age to track how environmental factors like air quality impact the neurodevelopment of their children in-utero and post-birth. The Awair Glow is an air quality monitor that plugs directly into wall outlets and tracks the following key factors that affect air quality: Temperature, Humidity, CO2 and Chemicals. It is also able to track improvements in air quality over time and provides actionable insights within the companion mobile app.
“What we’re very excited about with using the Awair Glow is that we’ll be able to see how changes in air quality such as VOCs or particulate concentration levels affect neurodevelopment at a young age,” says Joseph Braun, assistant professor at Brown University.
The Baby Imaging Lab will use data on air quality collected from the Awair Glow along with data on early nutrition and eating habits, sleep, physical activity, microbiomes, genetics and a child’s in utero environment to understand how these factors affect childhood obesity, asthma and other pre- and postnatal outcomes. The study involves assessments of maternal and fetal/infant nutrition, cognitive performance (such as IQ, language development, etc.) and brain development (assessed by ultrasound, US, and magnetic resonance imaging, MRI).
“It might be overly ambitious to say this, but we’re confident that we’ll be able to deliver a more thorough analysis on this subject matter than has been done in the past. We certainly have the largest sample size and are the only study that utilizes repeat MRIs over a longer period than usual,” says Sean Deoni, Adjunct Professor of Engineering at Brown University and Director of Pediatric MRI Research at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island. “The Awair Glow provides the perfect data capture solution that is non-invasive to our participants yet provides us with the data we need to conduct our analyses.”
Awair Founder Ronald Ro, after realizing that there were no effective solutions for monitoring air quality following struggles with his daughter’s eczema, built the first Awair to help parents track chemicals and toxicants, allowing them to optimize their home environment to keep children healthy.
“Partnering with the Baby Imaging Lab and Echo is a logical extension of what our company offers to consumers. We’re happy to be able to contribute to the Resonance study and do our part to provide scientific insight to parents on how they can create healthy environments for their children at home,” says Ro.
The Resonance study is currently underway and is expected to conclude in 2023.
