Field studies on the sick building syndrome

Area of Science:

• Environmental Health
• Occupational Health
• Building Science

Background:

• Traditional sick building syndrome (SBS) studies use long-term symptom questionnaires, often failing to pinpoint specific environmental causes.
• Existing research implicates ventilation systems in indoor air quality complaints but lacks definitive exposure identification.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and apply a novel method for short-term quantification of SBS symptoms and indoor environmental characterization.
• To identify specific causes of building-related complaints and explore dose-response relationships in SBS.

Main Methods:

• Developed a method combining short-term symptom assessment with direct-reading and short-term sampling techniques for indoor environmental characterization.
• Applied the method in two problem buildings and subsequently in non-problem buildings.

Main Results:

• Successfully identified the postulated cause of SBS in the first problem building.
• Generated a hypothesis for intervention in the second problem building.
• In non-problem buildings, complaints correlated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), lighting, desk time, and crowding.

Conclusions:

• The developed method is effective in identifying causes of SBS and suggests the existence of dose-response relationships.
• Limitations include challenges in microbial assessment and accounting for social/organizational factors influencing complaints.