Research - Stale Office Air Is Making You Less Productive
The impact of working in a green-certified building on cognitive function and health…
Thirty years of public health research have demonstrated that improved indoor environmental quality is associated with better health outcomes. Recent research has demonstrated the impact of the indoor environment on cognitive function.
Buildings have the capacity to create conditions that are harmful to health or conducive to health: they determine our exposure to outdoor pollutants, by either facilitating entry of particles of outdoor origin indoors, or acting as a barrier and removing them through enhanced filtration; they govern exposure to chemicals of concern, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), flame retardants and polyfluorinated compounds, which can be ubiquitous or nonexistent, depending on the decisions we make regarding building materials and products; buildings either protect us from noise or contribute to the problem through the introduction of indoor sources, poor noise insulation, or poor acoustical design; they can induce eye strain or improve alertness through impacts on circadian rhythm, depending on the lighting system; buildings can protect us during heat events, or create environments that magnify the problem through solar heat gain; and buildings can either wall us off from nature or connect us to it.
The scientific literature around buildings and health has identified the foundations of a healthy building including factors such as ventilation, air quality, thermal comfort, noise, and lighting, and this body of research has served as the basis for green certification standards to define their indoor environmental quality (IEQ) guidelines.
