The federal government ordered all public housing to be smoke-free in 2018. Old Dominion University researchers wanted to find out if the policy was working.
They set up more than 100 air quality monitors across 12 public housing buildings in Norfolk, Hampton, Suffolk, Newport News and Portsmouth in 2023. The monitors collected data every other minute, measuring the presence of particles smaller than a speck of dust, said Brynn Sheehan, who co-led the study.
“Because they’re so small, they can travel deep into the lungs and affect our health,” said Sheehan, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at ODU’s Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences…