Flood-prone homes are the frontline of climate change, yet their hidden indoor exposures remain invisible, primarily to science and policy. People spend nearly 90% of their lives indoors, yet adaptation research rarely considers the air we breathe or the water we drink inside our homes, particularly in disaster-prone, resource-limited communities. In Puerto Rico’s Caño Martín Peña (CMP) district (an urban flood corridor home to 11,000 residents), chronic humidity, recurrent flooding, and power outages create ideal conditions for the persistence of harmful pollutants that threaten health long after floodwaters recede.
To address these risks, this project focuses on four classes of indoor contaminants, including mold, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), microplastics, and heavy metals, that are poorly regulated in residential settings and collectively represent an urgent but understudied dimension of environmental health. While PFAS and microplastics have been studied in outdoor waters and soils, a systematic investigation of these pollutants indoors, particularly in conjunction with mold and heavy metals remains poorly characterized. Moreover, little is known about how extreme events such as flooding mobilize and amplify these contaminants indoors, leaving a critical gap in understanding their disaster-related impacts on human exposure.
This project incorporates in-home trials of low-cost interventions to evaluate how filtration and bio-based technologies can directly reduce exposures. This integrated measurement-to-mitigation approach is a paradigm shift for environmental health research.
