Run the risk

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.

Play the game

1. Gather everyone in a circle and ask everyone if they know what causes pollution. Choose a few people to share their answers then tell everyone that pollution is made up of particles and gases in the air, which we often can't see, but are very harmful to our health. They can cause serious illness because they can reach every organ in our bodies when we breathe them in – especially our brains, hearts and lungs. There are many causes of air pollution.

Outdoor air pollution is caused by things like: vehicles (cars, vans, planes, trains, boats...), factories, farming and burning fuel (e.g. wood burners, barbecues). Indoor air pollution is caused by things like: cooking, chemicals in cleaning or personal care products, dust and mould. 

2. Tell everyone that they’ll be playing a simple game that’ll help them to understand the impact of air pollution on our ability to breathe. It can be played indoors or outdoors.
3. First, use chalk to draw a 2m-by-2m square on the ground. In the game this represents the lungs.
4. Ask the young people to space themselves around the square and stand still. They need a gap between them, so everyone’s about 1 or 2 arm lengths apart, depending on the size of the group.
5. Select one young person to be an ‘oxygen molecule’ and a group of about 5 young people to be ‘particulates’. The ‘oxygen molecule’ and ‘particulates’ should stand to one side, outside the square. Everyone stood around the square will be the lungs.
6. Explain that particulates are tiny particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air, such as dust, soot, smoke, chemicals and dirt. Together, these particulates build up to cause air pollution. Some particles are big or dark enough for people to see, such as smoke, but others are so small that you can’t see them. Breathing in the particles can harm your health, as the particles can get into your body through your lungs and travel around your body through your bloodstream.
7. The ‘oxygen molecule’ should start to run slowly and carefully around the young people stood around the square, the ‘lungs’. They should be weaving in and out to pass through the 'lungs' and then stop when they get back to the person they started at. Time how long it takes and write it down.
8. Next, ask the ‘oxygen molecule’ to do it again, but this time they must take a ‘particulate’ with them – they could link arms or hold hands.

To represent the harm caused to the body by these pollutants, ask the particulates to do something annoying. They could try to slow down the oxygen by pulling against them with gentle force or blocking their path.

9. The ‘oxygen molecule’ should keep repeating this, taking another ‘particulate’ with them and each time leaving them in the lungs. When they try to pass through the lungs, they will find it becomes increasingly difficult as the inside of the lungs get more polluted. This shows how much harder it is for oxygen to move around the body when the lungs are breathing in polluted air.