Plum is a policy and public affairs professional, who has specialised for the last 10 years in cancer and terminal illness policy. It is this policy and patient advocacy experience, coupled with Plum’s lived experience with long COVID and a high-risk family, that has led her to found The Safer Air Project.
People living with chronic illnesses have always faced increased risks of poor health outcomes from infections, including through exposure to poor indoor air quality that can exacerbate their health conditions. These risks, which have increased since 2020, are not broadly recognised by society, marginalising many people, and highlighting a serious gap in our approach to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Plum believes we can change that now – by recognising that breathing safe air is an accessibility and inclusion issue and ensuring that indoor air is safe for everyone to breathe. Read more about Plum and The Safer Air Project HERE
My family were infected at the very start of the pandemic, I lost my sense of taste and smell for two weeks and my young daughter was hospitalised with a status seizure. By the time we moved into lockdown in March 2020 I had begun developing symptoms that we now know to be symptoms of long COVID. We were reasonably healthy and yet we both became very sick. As the pandemic progressed, I realised that the air that we breathe is an accessibility issue, especially for people with chronic health conditions and people at increased risk of developing chronic diseases like ME/CFS. The air we breathe must be safe – people must not be placed at risk just by breathing in shared indoor spaces.
My symptoms are neurological – POTS, headaches and extreme fatigue. My cofounder has similar symptoms, she too has POTS but less of the neuropathy and more PEM – this becomes a real challenge for us in running the Safe Air Project. It is critical to pace ourselves, we have to work hard to avoid any infections; and we have to build in time for rest after intense periods, because otherwise we cannot keep going.
Clinic19 – the long COVID clinic – has been great, they are experts and are across the latest data. For many patients with long COVID and ME/CFS – we have had to become the experts as many doctors particularly GPs, are so very busy and aren’t always across the most recent literature to best support their patients.
Preventing airborne infections from occurring is really important in reducing risk of illness and promoting health. Imagine that a virus behaves like cigarette smoke – if there was someone in the room with a virus, there is a risk of it reaching others, and therefore of viral transmission – and this creates a chain of transmission into families and communities.
So how do we make the air we breathe safe? Last year Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care The Hon Ged Kearney launched our key report detailing all the steps we can take to to improve indoor quality and make the air safe for everyone. These include recognising indoor air as an accessibility issue under the Disability Discrimination Act, setting indoor air quality performance standards for all public spaces and raising awareness of tools like CO2 monitors and HEPA filters.
I do think there are some places where masks should be mandated – for example in healthcare settings where everyone is sick and vulnerable – we know how so many people get sick by virtue of being in hospital, yet ironically there is so much attention to infection control in every other way.
We are delighted to share Emerge Australia Ambassador Bloom with her rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine to open and close our podcasts.
