Last summer, CU Boulder Engineering Professor Marina Vance took scientific field research to a new level: she moved her family out of their home in Boulder for seven weeks to make room for a group of 20 researchers and dozens of instruments. The goal was to simulate a real-world environment where scientists could measure and analyze indoor air quality.

The campaign, the CLEAN Home Field Study, is a collaboration among CU Boulder Mechanical Engineering, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and CIRES researchers from Jose Jimenez and Joost de Gouw’s labs. The research team, including CIRES chemistry PhD student Rebecca Mesburis, introduced environmental pollutants—smoke and ozone—into Vance’s home and observed how they interacted with daily activities like cooking and using cleaning products. 

Mesburis will present preliminary results today at the 2025 AGU Annual Meeting. 

Researchers investigated SOA (secondary organic aerosol) formation from the use of cleaning products inside a real home. Preliminary results found that the buildup of cooking oils and other materials on indoor surfaces may form SOA at levels ten times higher than those found outdoors. SOAs are particulate matter that is harmful to human health.

“Doing this research in real time in a real home helped us better understand which activities contribute the most to indoor air pollution and how we can make changes in our homes to protect and improve human health,” said Mesburis, who led data collection for the Jimenez group. 

Throughout the summer, researchers investigated different combinations of these pollutants and products in Vance’s kitchen while monitoring the results on the slew of instruments set up in her garage. To measure the formation of particle pollution from Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), gas-phase pollutants introduced by day-to-day activities inside homes, they sprayed surfaces with various cleaning products. 

Mesburis collected data using an oxidation flow reactor (OFR), a chemistry instrument that measured the potential to form SOA. CU Boulder’s Mechanical Engineering team and an NCAR researcher conducted measurements with several mass spectrometers (to measure VOCs) and particle instruments (to measure SOAs). As a team, they will piece together the pollution and air quality impacts from cooking, cleaning techniques, and germicidal ultraviolet (GUV) light. 

The continuous monitoring of the study was time-intensive—Mesburis visited the research site daily. The research team performed different daily activities as experiments in the kitchen by using cleaning products twice a day, morning and afternoon, and monitored background levels of indoor pollution overnight. 

The Jimenez group is sifting through preliminary results with plans to publish a paper next year. 

“While we’re still analyzing results, we can be sure that indoor air quality is compromised by the use of VCPs indoors,” Mesburis said. “People can buy unscented products, cook with the range hood on, and open windows when possible to improve the air quality inside their home.”

Click here to learn more about Rebecca Masburis’s 2025 AGU presentation.