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The Great Exhibition Road Festival is a free annual celebration of science and the arts in South Kensington. The Festival is a collaboration between cultural and research institutions based in and around Exhibition Road in South Kensington, including Imperial College London, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the V&A and the Royal Albert Hall.

Two of our researchers, Liza and Anna, took part in this year's festival in London as part of a collaboration the Unit has with the National Institute for Health and Care Research Unit (NIHR HRPU) in Environmental Exposures and Health, which is based at Imperial College London. They supported the stall 'Healthy Cities, Healthy Lives', which playfully aimed to teach and inform visitors about outdoor and indoor air pollution.

As always, visitors of all ages had great questions about air quality both outside and inside of our homes, where people seemed particularly interested in how they could reduce air pollution indoors. They had several activities - a doll's house where visitors could point out and discuss sources of indoor air pollution, some games that tested short term memory and reaction times, which links to the SCAMP study of how air pollution affects children's cognitive function, and some piggy banks labelled with different environmental issues where people could insert a token to say which issue they thought was the most pressing to solve.

Liza's research explores the ways that air pollution causes harm to the body. Anna's research focuses on the interaction of our gut bacteria with environmental pollutants.