Podcast: 5 minutes with: Claire Horwell
In this episode of 5 Minutes With, we chat to Professor Claire Horwell, Professor in Geohealth at Durham University.
Professor Claire Horwell, Professor in Geohealth at Durham University.
Episode Transcript
[00:11] Marissa Lo: Hello and welcome to Five Minutes With, a podcast by Geoscientist magazine. My name is Marissa Lo and today I’m joined by Professor Claire Horwell, professor in geohealth at Durham University. So thanks so much for joining us today, Claire. Can you please tell us a bit about your work?
[00:27] Claire Horwell: So I am an air pollution scientist. I work on the hazards and impacts of air pollution and, for many years, I was focused on volcanoes and how communities are affected by volcanic emissions. But, in recent years, I have broadened out to look at all kinds of different air pollution, including urban air pollution. And I do this in a very interdisciplinary way, drawing on the Earth sciences, on exposure sciences, on different aspects of the medical and public health sciences as well, and even a little bit branching into ethics and law.
[01:01] Marissa Lo: Can you tell us what you’re currently working on?
[01:03] Claire Horwell: At the moment, I’m running a large consortium project, so this is a three-year project that is based in Nepal, Indonesia, and the UK, and we’re looking at how to protect children from urban air pollution. So we’re mainly looking at face masks and we focused on the best kind of face mask, which is called a respirator. So you’ve probably heard of N95 or FFP2 masks from the pandemic, so these are the ones that are certified to a high level and we focused on whether these actually are effective for children.
[01:36] Marissa Lo: Can you tell us a bit more about your work with volcanic health hazards?
[01:41] Claire Horwell: During my PhD, I became interested in whether and how volcanic ash was toxic for humans to inhale. And so I was using geochemical techniques to understand, not just what the ash was made of, but what was happening on its surface that would make it reactive in the human lungs. And I also started a network called the International Volcanic Health Hazard Network, which I just shorten to IVHHN. That network has grown to become an advice-giving organisation that advises governments on preparedness for the health response to eruptions and also gives public information to help communities during eruptions know how to protect themselves. So, when we inhale any kind of particle, it can have an effect in our lungs. We have great systems in our body for getting rid of particles, but sometimes, depending on what the particle is made of, it can have a, basically a catastrophic effect in the lung and could trigger lung diseases. What we see with volcanic ash is that we know that people can be affected in the short term so they can get irritation of the lungs like cough and sore throat and that kind of thing. And what a lot of my research has focused on is whether ash is actually capable of causing more serious long-term problems. And actually, the good news is that, from the work we’ve done, we do see mechanisms by which lung diseases could occur, but actually looking at the clinical data, we don’t see huge outbreaks of lung disease in the decades after eruptions.
[03:12] Marissa Lo: What’s your favourite thing about your research?
[03:15] Claire Horwell: It is having an impact. I think all of the research that I do at the end of the day is to try and improve people’s lives. It’s all about making a difference and that is what drives me every single day. So I know that if I can have a positive impact, if the work that I have done has resulted in public guidance which helps to save lives or improve people’s wellbeing during an air pollution crisis of some kind or other, then that’s huge for me. And yeah, it drives my satisfaction with my job and motivates me to carry on. Of course, governments around the world are doing their best to try and reduce emissions from urban pollutants, anthropogenic pollutants. It’s a really, really slow process. When you go to these countries, you see just what a huge task it’s going to be to clean up the air. And this is what motivates me as well, to find solutions to protect children particularly, but adults as well, in the meantime, when people have no choice but to be in this environment.
[04:18] Marissa Lo: What advice would you give to someone who’s interested in geohealth and maybe wants to go into this field?
[04:25] Claire Horwell: First of all, you have to be prepared to immerse yourself in several different disciplines, so it is challenging. Surrounding yourself by colleagues and mentors who are going through the same process or who have been through that process is really, really helpful. This field has grown immeasurably since I started out. The volcanic health field is still quite small, but environmental health, geohealth, medical geology is now far larger, so there’s a great community to engage with. Immerse yourself in that community and get all the advice you can. And also to not try to helicopter in and do things. You can’t just decide to be a social scientist one day, you need to have immersed yourself and taken some training in a discipline before actually embarking on it. The American Geophysical Union has a GeoHealth section and it has an ECR network (early career network). And there’s also a great organisation called the International Medical Geology Association. So yeah, around the world it’s a very international discipline.
[05:28] Marissa Lo: Well, thanks so much for joining us, Claire, it’s been a real pleasure to chat to you today.
[05:33] Claire Horwell: Thank you for inviting me.
