Marcella Ucci

• Associate Professor at University College London

BACKGROUND Long-term effects of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure on mortality and morbidity are well established. The study aims to evaluate how short-term indoor PM2.5 exposure affects physiological responses and understand potential mechanisms mediating the cognitive outcomes in working-age adults. METHODS This real-world randomiz...

Background Poor air quality can both trigger and aggravate lung and heart conditions, as well as affecting child development. It can even lead to neurological and mental health problems. However, the precise mechanisms by which air pollution affect human health are not well understood. Aims To promote interdisciplinary dialogue and better research...

This document is a supplementary material to paper 'Sustaining Attention to Sustainability, Health, and Well-Being in Urban Regeneration'.

In urban regeneration projects, balancing environmental, social, and economic aspects is crucial but challenging, often leading to mission drift when team focus deviates from the original goals. Through a case study of regeneration projects at a large U.K. housing association, we explore decision makers’ attention to sustainability, health, and wel...

Educational buildings frequently experience elevated CO2 concentrations with inadequate ventilation and high occupancy, sometimes exceeding building guideline levels. Some studies reported detrimental impacts on cognitive performance of indoor CO2 levels, while others did not. To generate further evidence, we conducted an experiment in an enviro...

Background: Poor air quality is associated with poor health. Little attention is given to the complex array of environmental exposures and air pollutants that affect mental health during the life course. Aims: We gather interdisciplinary expertise and knowledge across the air pollution and mental health fields. We seek to propose future research...

Objectives Qualitative research exploring impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children in the United Kingdom, consists of studies either done about, but not with children¹ or explore a general population.² Investigations exploring children living in temporary accommodation during COVID-19 lockdowns, from the child’s own voice, do not exist. To addr...

To explore the associations of exposure to carbon dioxide with adults’ response speed, 69 participants were invited to participate in the experiment conducted in an environmentally controlled chamber. Participants were exposed alone in three separate sessions, each lasting one hour, with a fixed ventilation rate, temperature and relative humidity l...

Impacts of exposure to particulate matter can be wide-ranging, with some evidence suggesting potential impacts on nervous system, cognition, and productivity. However, most evidence to date addresses ambient exposure and chronic outcomes with limited research on indoor short-term exposure to PM2.5 and cognitive performance. Hence, the aim of this s...

Background: Children < 5 years living in temporary accommodation (U5TA) are vulnerable to poor health outcomes. Few qualitative studies have examined service provider perspectives in family homelessness; none have focused on U5TA with a cross-sector approach. This study explored professionals' perspectives of the barriers and facilitators, includi...

Background Children younger than 5 years living in temporary accommodation due to homelessness (U5TA) are extremely vulnerable to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Few qualitative studies have examined provider perspectives in family homelessness, but none focused on U5TA specifically. We aimed to qualitatively explore professionals' perspectiv...

Children’s health can be affected by the interrelated characteristics of the physical and social environment where they live, including housing quality, neighbourhood characteristics and the local community. Following a systems-based approach, this exploratory project sought to understand how the needs and aspirations associated with the home envir...

Aims On 23rd March 2020, the first of many COVID-19 lockdown measures were implemented in England, which affected the general population, but especially those already considered vulnerable. Homelessness is a known determinant of poor mental health. The objective was to determine whether experiencing homelessness while living in temporary accommodat...

Aims Children experiencing homelessness while living in temporary accommodation (TA) have a higher life-long risk of developing chronic conditions, repeated cycles of homelessness and adverse childhood experiences. The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionally negatively impacted vulnerable populations. The study objective was to quantitively explore...

Health impacts of exposure to particulate matter can be wide-ranging, with some evidence suggesting potential impacts on cognition and productivity. This study was conducted in an urban mixed-mode ventilated office in China. Sixty eligible employees agreed to participate in the study and fifty-five valid responses were obtained. The perception of a...

The first five years of life are critical for optimal growth, health, and cognitive development. Adverse childhood experiences, including experiencing homelessness, can be a risk factor for multiple health issues and developmental challenges. There is a dearth of data collected with and by families with children under age five living in temporary a...

Impairment in mental functions attributed to the effects of indoor air quality and thermal conditions has received considerable attention in the past decade, particularly for educational buildings where students’ cognitive performance is essential to foster learning. This study explores the combined effects of indoor temperatures and CO_{2} levels...

In the hot climate of Saudi Arabia, people living year‐round in air‐conditioned spaces are likely to develop high expectations for homogeneity and cool temperatures, becoming potentially more sensitive if thermal conditions deviate from the comfort zone they expect. This paper presents the results from a field intervention investigating the associa...

Incorporating consideration of causal mechanisms of complex policy issues and goals is critical for policy design, but tools to support exploration of the interconnections, trade-offs and unintended consequences of a focused policy issue are limited. Understanding how to undertake systems-based policy design is crucial for designing effective polic...

Poor air quality is associated with poor health. Little attention is given to the complex array of environmental exposures and air pollutants that impact mental health during the life course. By gathering expertise across the air pollution and mental health fields, we summarise the findings of a rapid scoping discussion, to identify knowledge gaps...

Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is a major public health issue worldwide. People are exposed to CO in their daily lives, with one of the common sources of CO being cigarette smoking. Inhalation of CO leads to elevated carboxyhaemoglobin (COHb) levels in the blood and also in exhaled CO concentration. Several factors have been shown to affect COHb co...

Background In 2019, 585 000 children in England were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health-care delivery system has amplified the inequalities faced by marginalised children. Although the UK has had a series of successful health sector reforms, few have designed or implemented strategies that...

Although the built environment (BE) is important for children’s health, there is little consensus about which features are most important due to differences in measurement and outcomes across disciplines. This meta-narrative review was undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers to summarise ways in which the BE is measured, and how this...

BACKGROUND: The first 5 years of life are crucial for optimising growth, health, and cognitive development. However, many children do not reach their full cognitive and developmental potential because of multilevel barriers, including those resulting from poverty and homelessness. This review summarises the evidence characterising the barriers to a...

BACKGROUND To achieve sustainability, we must consider scalable improvements in student movement behavior in the classroom setting, educational priorities. Flexible learning spaces that employ student‐centered pedagogy and contain a range of furniture and layout options, implemented to improve educational outcomes, may enable unintended health bene...

Air pollution is the environmental public health problem of our time. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out clear guidance to protecting the rights of children and young people, including a child's right to the best possible health (Article 24) and the right to a good standard of living. Unicef also consider that clean a...

Improved housing has the potential to advance health and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Research examining housing, health and energy use in low-income countries is limited; understanding these connections is vital to inform interventions for healthy sustainable human settlements. This paper investigates the low-income setting of...

Economic, physical, built, cultural, learning, social and service environments have a profound effect on lifelong health. However, policy thinking about health research is dominated by the ‘biomedical model’ which promotes medicalisation and an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment at the expense of prevention. Prevention research has tended to focus...

Economic, physical, built, cultural, learning, social and service environments have a profound effect on lifelong health. However, policy thinking about health research is dominated by the 'biomedical model' which promotes medicalisation and an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment at the expense of prevention. Prevention research has tended to focus...

Several industry-led initiatives in various countries demonstrate a new interest in wellbeing and buildings. This paper adopts a scoping review method aiming to establish the most prevalent and insightful definitions and dimensions of wellbeing in buildings applied in the recent published literature. The paper adopts a two-step method for identifyi...

Several industry-led initiatives in various countries demonstrate a new interest in wellbeing and buildings. This paper adopts a scoping review method aiming to establish the most prevalent and insightful definitions and dimensions of wellbeing in buildings applied in the recent published literature. The paper adopts a two-step method for identifyi...

Habitual behaviours are learned responses that are triggered automatically by associated environmental cues. The unvarying nature of most workplace settings makes workplace physical activity a prime candidate for a habitual behaviour, yet the role of habit strength in occupational physical activity has not been investigated. Aims of the present stu...

Office-based workers spend a large proportion of the day sitting and tend to have low overall activity levels. Despite some evidence that features of the external physical environment are associated with physical activity, little is known about the influence of the spatial layout of the internal environment on movement, and the majority of data use...

Background Understanding the environmental determinants of physical activity in populations at high risk of inactivity could contribute to the development of effective interventions. Socioecological models of activity propose that environmental factors have independent and interactive effects of physical activity but there is a lack of research int...

GoWell neighbourhood locations in 2006. Background map sourced from Google Maps; www.google.co.uk/maps. Accessed February 2017. (DOCX)

Results for post-hoc tests examining effect of selected environment factor on walking and moderate physical activity. Models were conducted by stratified group and included selected environment factors and covariates (sex, age, citizenship, employment status, tenure, mobility-limiting illness, vehicle ownership, distance to audit site and neighbour...

The health benefits of regular physical activity are substantial and well-established. However, population activity levels are insufficient to obtain health benefits in the United Kingdom (UK), and strategies to increase activity, particularly in income-deprived communities, are sought. Socioecological models of physical activity posit that activit...

Temperatures and indoor CO2 levels within buildings play a crucial role, not only for energy consumption, but also for occupant performance and particularly cognitive performance regarding all mental activities such as thinking, reasoning, and remembering. Using a multi-variable multilevel approach, the effects of classroom temperature and CO2 leve...

58 percent of Nairobi’s population live in slums under extremely poor and unhealthy condi-tions. In these settlements, pneumonia is one of the top causes of health issues and deaths among children and adults, for which indoor air pollution is a known contributor. Yet, the topic of indoor air pollution receives no attention. Regulatory frameworks an...

Background: Ecological models of physical activity posit that social and physical environmental features exert independent and interactive influences on physical activity, but previous research has focussed on independent influences. This systematic review aimed to synthesise the literature investigating how features of neighbourhood physical and s...

Background Individuals in office-based occupations have low levels of physical activity but there is little research into the socio-ecological correlates of workplace activity. Aims To identify factors contributing to office-based workers’ perceptions of the office environment and explore cross-sectional relationships between these factors and o...

This study, examining a Passivhaus retrofit in London, investigates optimum pathways for non-domestic low energy retrofits in the UK, capable of preserving their low energy status in future changing climates. A methodological framework is deployed, utilizing multi-objective optimisation (MOO) techniques and setting three conflicting objectives: bui...

Background Physical activity reduces the risk of morbidity and high sedentary time may be associated with negative health outcomes. The workplace offers an arena to promote physical activity and reduce sedentary time, but existing workplace-based interventions have typically yielded small effects. Aims To collate the literature on correlates of oc...

The special issue of Building Research & Information special issue focuses on the indoor built environment, particularly on the home, occupational and educational settings where further knowledge of activity levels and the possibilities for change are needed. This issue includes papers covering some key building types and populations, such as resid...

Little is known of the patterns of physical activity, standing and sitting by office workers. However, insight into these behaviours is of growing interest, notably in regard to public health priorities to reduce non-communicable disease risk factors associated with high levels of sitting time and low levels of physical activity. With the advent an...

Additional Material. Appendix containing further information on the inference procedure, full participant results and supplementary figures. Table A: Summary of excluded data and the effect on utilised direct observations. Table B: Physical activity and sitting time data for valid data for included participants. Table C: Trip data using valid data...

Physical activity levels in children are low and sitting time high, despite the health benefits of regular physical activity and limited sitting. Children spend a large proportion of their time at school, hence school-based interventions targeting physical activity and sitting behaviour may be important. Whilst some aspects of school buildings, the...

There is a growing body of research into the total amount and patterns of sitting, standing and stepping in office-based workers and few studies using objectively measured sitting and standing. Understanding these patterns may identify daily times opportune for interventions to displace sitting with activity. A sample of office-based workers (n = 1...

Various countries have introduced minimum cooling set-points for air-conditioning either through voluntary or mandatory policies. In the UK, recent recommendations advocate higher summer thermostat settings in offices than formerly, with an indication that 24±2 °C may deliver thermally comfortable environments. However, limited published informatio...

This study investigated the relationships between thermal conditions and perceived learning performance (PLP) by comparing air-conditioned (AC) and fan-assisted naturally ventilated (FANV) environments. The study aimed to provide evidence to support decision-making on the use of fan-assisted natural ventilation in mixed-mode higher education buildi...

Health benefits of regular participation in physical activity are well documented but population levels are low. Office layout, and in particular the number and location of office building destinations (eg, print and meeting rooms), may influence both walking time and characteristics of sitting time. No research to date has focused on the role that...

It has been argued that the amount of time spent by humans in thermoneutral environments has increased in recent decades. This paper examines evidence of historic changes in winter domestic temperatures in industrialised countries. Future trajectories for indoor thermal comfort are also explored. Whilst methodological differences across studies mak...

Due to recent studies and government policies, designers and facilities managers are becoming increasingly aware of the role of occupant behaviour in energy conservation in buildings. While the use of post-occupancy surveys and benchmark tools is widespread in the built environment, there is limited research on assessing environmental and energy sa...

Simulations using CONTAM (a validated multi-zone indoor air quality (IAQ) model) are employed to predict indoor exposure to PM2.5 in London dwellings in both the present day housing stock and the same stock following energy efficient refurbishments to meet greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for 2050. We modelled interventions that would con...

Climate change mitigation and adaptation policies in the built environment can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also bring ancillary public health benefits by reducing coldrelated mortality and indoor air pollution. However, increased airtightness of dwellings may have some negative effects on health related to thermal stress and chemical and bi...

Following the Japanese Cool Biz campaign which advocated relaxed dress codes and cooling set-points of 28 degrees C in air-conditioned public buildings, other countries have introduced similar policies, with temperature limits varying in different countries. In the UK the British Council for Offices suggested that the summer cooling set-points of U...

This study examined the role of strategic and operational facility management in thermal adaptability enhancement in educational estates. Individual and organisational ability to adapt to non-air-conditioned environments were assessed using a questionnaire survey of university students and from interviews with facility managers. The aim of the stud...

This article discusses the capabilities and the application of an innovative combined hygrothermal and population model to assess the impact of building design and occupant behaviour on house dust mite populations in a mattress. The combined model is the first of its kind able to predict the impact of hourly transient hygrothermal conditions within...

Domestic winter indoor temperatures in the USA, UK and other developed countries appear to be following an upwards trend. This review examines evidence of a causal link between thermal exposures and increases in obesity prevalence, focusing on acute and longer-term biological effects of time spent in thermal comfort compared with mild cold. Reduced...

Beds are a crucial source of house dust mite (HDM) allergens, which play a major role in allergic disease, particularly asthma. HDM require a specific combination of hygrothermal conditions to thrive. These bed conditions depend on a number of interacting factors, such as: external climate; building characteristics; heating, ventilation and moistur...

This paper describes a pilot intervention study on the effectiveness of house dust mite allergen avoidance for 12 asthmatic children (two being controls). In addition to mite allergen removal, the study included tailored advice aimed at reducing mite population growth via changes in moisture production, heating and ventilation habits. This paper fo...

Life histories of "wild" house dust mites, Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (Trouessart) (Acari: Pyroglyphidae), were compared with laboratory cultures by using a diet consisting of skin and dust or a laboratory diet consisting of dried liver and yeast. Under constant conditions of 25 degrees C and 75% RH, fecundity and rate of reproduction were high...

A generalised model of the life cycle of a house dust mite, which can be tailored to any particular species of domestic mite, is presented. The model takes into account the effects of hygrothermal conditions on each life cycle phase. It is used in a computer simulation program, called POPMITE, which, by incorporating a population age structure, is...

This paper reviews the literature for evidence of links between ventilation rates in dwellings and moisture related respiratory health with a particular focus on house dust mites (HDM) and fungal growth. There is general consensus that a link exists between ventilation rates in dwellings and respiratory hazards (for example HDM). There is also gene...

Recent studies show that the UK is one of the countries with the highest asthma prevalence worldwide. It has been suggested that the trend towards the reduction of domestic ventilation rates for energy-efficiency reasons has resulted in poor indoor air quality and may represent a causal factor for the high asthma prevalence in the UK. This study f...

Allergens derived from house dust mite (HDM) faeces play a major role in allergic disease, especially asthma. It is well-known that house dust mite physiology is greatly affected by hygrothermal microclimatic conditions. Consequently, there is considerable interest in reducing mite populations in dwellings by modifying the fabric and services in a...