Chris’s interest in air pollution and its impacts was fostered during a PhD in atmospheric chemistry at the University of Edinburgh and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. The focus was on the interpretation of data collected at the two UK monitoring supersites to demonstrate the linkage between specific impacts (e.g. on human health and vegetation) of atmospheric composition, and the conditions producing them. To achieve this a wide variety of tools and statistical techniques were used, which resulted in broader research interests in the application of statistical tools to investigate air pollution, and specifically how these tools can be integrated together to maximise the information derived from available data.