Sick Building Syndrome

I worked in a building like this. Over the year I worked in that office, my asthma got gradually worse and worse. I went from using my rescue inhaler maybe once every couple months (for minor cough&#x2F;discomfort), to using it multiple times per day just to breathe. Inhaled steroids (Advair Diskus) were added to my asthma prescriptions. Eventually I could barely get through the day without prolonged fits of coughing and multiple asthma attacks.<p>Went to the doctor again, got diagnosed with bronchitis, sent home with prescription cough medicine and even more steroids (prednisone) and was told not to work for at least a week. Got better.<p>Started coughing again within 30 minutes of entering the building when I went back to work. Then put together that with the fact that I always felt a little better after my lunch breaks to realize it was the building itself making me sick.<p>We were getting ready to move to a larger office anyway, so got permission to work from home when necessary until the move. We moved offices, my coughing stopped. I discontinued all the steroids and now am back to using my rescue inhaler almost never.<p>I can&#x27;t imagine the building had no effect on anyone else, but I definitely got the worst of it. No one else got sick the way I did.<p>The building itself was a historic building, a Firestone car repair place that had been retro-fitted to be an office. It was built in 1927, and then sat empty since the 1950s, until it was renovated in 2014.

Use scientific methods to measure air flow and quality (CO2), and humidity. You want around 50% humidity and CO2 to be below 700 ppm. CO2 doesn&#x27;t directly measure air quality, only how often that air is changed. The more like outside (around 300 ppm) the better. 35% or lower humidity will effect your your skin and mucous membrane. A dried out mucous membrane makes it easier to catch a cold. And dried out skin leads to cracks and itching. But too high humidity 80% + is also bad. If the temperature between outside and inside differs more then 7 degrees C, it&#x27;s enough to effect the humidity, for example if it&#x27;s cold outside, the cold air expand, leading to less relative water. You can get a humidifier or dehumidifier to control humidity, and use ventilation to control air ventilation. Then there&#x27;s also temperature, you want around 20-23 C to be comfortable, but I guess you already figured that one =)

Can anyone recommend a method to be happy in a depressing office for 40 hours? I am an outdoorsy active person and it is very hard to code in the coldly manufactured cubicle that I must stay in. Window view is very minimal, walls are drab, workplace has no fun activities whatsoever, coworkers are quiet at least, but not welcoming or fun. I just feel spending so much time in that confined space really hurts my coding and mental game.

Literature Review – Microbial Growth in Buildings<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paradigmchange.me&#x2F;building-literature&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paradigmchange.me&#x2F;building-literature&#x2F;</a><p>Health Effects of Moldy Buildings – Sick Building Syndrome<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paradigmchange.me&#x2F;buildings-sbs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paradigmchange.me&#x2F;buildings-sbs&#x2F;</a><p>Health Effects of Moldy Buildings<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paradigmchange.me&#x2F;buildings&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paradigmchange.me&#x2F;buildings&#x2F;</a>

Anecdotally, this can happen without it being the building per se.<p>When I worked in a cubicle farm, cubicles were not necessarily cleaned out if someone left. I have serious health issues, including respiratory problems, and I&#x27;m very sensitive to dust, germs, etc. My immediate boss was asthmatic and yadda.<p>There was an abandoned cubicle very near both of us that had about two linear feet of papers in it. They were covered in a visible layer of dust. I concluded this was negatively impacting my health. I knew no one would believe me or care. Everyone always acts like I have an overactive imagination.<p>I began quietly carting the papers out. Anything still usable got redistributed and re-used. Anything in such bad shape it couldn&#x27;t be mailed to customers got dumped in the recycling bins a handful at a time.<p>It probably took me a week or two to do this in small enough amounts at a time so that no one would notice what I was doing. My asthmatic boss was on like round three of antibiotics for bronchitis that wouldn&#x27;t clear up. After all the musty, dusty papers were removed, she &quot;coincidentally&quot; finally got better.

I suspect a lot of it is caused by an emphasis on energy efficiency, which means tightly sealed rooms and HVAC that&#x27;s set to recirculate the majority of air rather than bring in fresh air from outside. I&#x27;ve noticed that a lot of older buildings tend to have more fresh-air ventilation than newer ones for this reason.

Five Ways Tower[1] in Birmingham, UK has been closed for years because of this.<p>&gt; The building is vacant due to the last tenants evacuating the building due to ill health amongst the workforce.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Five_Ways_Tower" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Five_Ways_Tower</a>

I had terribly allergic rhinitis throughout my youth, but only at my family&#x27;s home. When, after I moved out, my parents pulled out the carpet in my old bedroom, my allergies at that house vanished.

been there. landed a great job, loved the coding tasks, had great colleagues. the office was an open-plan one. seemed cold rightaway for me. sitting under a ventilation shaft, the cool air flowing was not pleasant but still liveable. cold all day long but also sweating at the same time as the office didnt seem to have oxygen. gasping out of a small kitchen window for air - one of few openable ones :) did some air vents hacking. 4 months i start to feel weird. cold empassing my bladder, lower stomach. total allergy to any airflow. took a -20 degree celsius sleeping bag to work. spending my days wrapped in it. didnt help. switching office desks to see if there&#x27;s a chair i can sit at. the 40+ people in the open plan obviously see theres a nutcase in the building. my direct bosses are compassionate though. they see im not kidding. under-table-portable heating is suggested. geopathogenic zones are suggested existing in place. i go see doctors. im in pain, my bladder us killing me, doctors&#x2F;urologists say everything is fine with me. i cant drive the subway because theres draught. i google sick building syndrome. us this really hapenning ? i quit. they let me go rightaway (thx) im fine in two weeks. havent experienced that since (6-7 years?) but been working in non-airconditioned buildings since then. fearing the moment a next job has similar fucked up problems. ill say bye bye right away, wont be waiting for months!!!

&quot;Hi boss, I can&#x27;t show up today, I have sick building syndrome. Actually, I won&#x27;t be able to show up ever again.&quot;

I&#x27;d highly recommend buying a CO2&#x2F;PM2.5 measurer and seeing what the levels are in your house or workplace. CO2 over 1,000 PPM has been linked to reduced cognitive performance. As an aside they function as excellent temperate and humidity readers for general use.

Up until around year 2000, very few buildings in Russia were built with artificial ventilation, and that with non-stop indoor smoking. Any &quot;big box&quot; building was survivable to me. Back then, it was thought as something normal, to the point that people regarded not having stuffy air and +26~ indoors as &quot;cold and inhospitable.&quot;<p>This is one of reasons I don&#x27;t like the country. I think, even today, when Russian people who never been abroad, come to America, the first thing they notice is how good is the ventilation indoors.

Does anyone have any experience with air quality sensors what would easily tell me if the air in the building I&#x27;m in is bad along the lines of sick building syndrome?<p>Ideally some sensor that&#x27;s relatively inexpensive and easy to use and connects to smart phone? There&#x27;s several out there for home use but I&#x27;d love to carry around something that just told me constantly and also that was more than just particle density sensor.

My father in law was the fire chief in a city where a locally famous government building was notorious for sick building syndrome in the 90s.<p>The building was and is a soulless cube farm with floors alternating in color from institutional green&#x2F;gray&#x2F;orange&#x2F;blue.<p>It was 90% psychology, usually kicked off by a smell, anything from wet hair to popcorn to paint. They were medically evacuating a dozen people a day at the peak hysteria.<p>His solution was to park the fire truck and ambulance behind well out of site and respond in a UHaul truck. The fireman&#x2F;paramedic left turnout gear behind and wore a hoodie over their uniform, and turned off radios. Once they did that, the calls went down to 1-2 a day and went away about a week after that.

Heh, now that I got reminded of this... I had throat pain for 7-8 weeks or so after moving into an old house. It would go away when I was away from home. There&#x27;s no obvious mold, dust, moisture etc. problem; so I was about to schedule a professional air test, when the throat pain stopped and never came back. Also, my wife never had any problems.<p>What would you think that was? A temporary sick building? My only hypothesis is that I am allergic to something outside the house that is not there anymore now that it&#x27;s fall. However, the plants around the house are basically the same stuff that&#x27;s present everywhere around town.

It&#x27;s so weird, I&#x27;ve had something like this at a co-working space I was at. Upper level smelled &quot;musty&quot; or something to me, and I felt half-sick every time I would spend a full day up there. Went to the lower level and was fine. When they consolidated to the upper level only, I went with, and my symptoms returned. It was so consistent that I had to leave, but I still feel weird about it...how come no one else was experiencing this? They couldn&#x27;t smell the same smell and seem to be fine working there day in and day out. Am I really that hypersensitive?

I think carpets are the source of a lot of problems with office buildings. Carpets and problematic central air, with possible mold, bad filters, etc. In the US it is not possible to open the widows in these types of offices.

Reduced body movement, &quot;conditioned&quot; air, relatively stagnant airflow (even when turned by metal fans, not the quality air that has most recently blown through vegetation)

I&#x27;m surprised they didn&#x27;t mention allergies. Dust mites and mold can cause many of these symptoms in people (this is what I deal with in my own apartment).

It would be interesting to see a comparison of office spaces broken down by age and type of HVAC ducting (or other types of heating in general such as radiators).