Ever since the 1970s, building design has focused on making commercial buildings more energy efficient, causing buildings to become more and more air-tight. At first glance this might seem like a good idea; keeping the air inside a building pure and free of outside pollutants seems like the best solution, and if the HVAC system is just recycling air from throughout the building it will be more efficient than if it was pulling air from outside. The problem with this way of thinking for building design is that indoor air often has pollution levels significantly higher than what can be found outdoors, and exposure to this air can cause workers to suffer from Sick Building Syndrome.
In the 1980s building requirements for commercial ventilation systems were not very stringent, and as a result buildings from that time actually caused workers to get sick, resulting in high costs for medical issues and lost profit from reduced productivity. The reaction to these poorly designed buildings was to focus on “Green” building systems, which reduce the environmental impact of a building. The focus with green building is on improving health and energy efficiency, and does include information covering the ventilation system or the air inside the building.
Green buildings can be credited for having lower concentrations of pollution particles, VOCs, and allergens, but Carbon Dioxide and air exchange rate are excluded because of the focus on energy efficiency. A Green+ building focuses on these extra conditions, enhancing ventilation and removing higher levels of CO2.
A study published by Environmental Health Perspectives had 24 participants work in a controlled office environment for 6 days, with the office environment being either a conventional office environment, one that matched green conditions, one that had green+ conditions, and one that had artificially raised levels of CO2. After working in these environments the participants were tested for cognitive ability using Strategic Management Simulation software that tested their decision making abilities. The findings were surprising for these office environments.
Scores for people in the green building environments were on average double that of those in the conventional office environment. The scores for crisis response were 97% higher for green conditions and 131% higher for green+ environments than in standard office environments, 183% and 288% higher for strategy, and 172% and 299% higher for information usage scores.
This shows that not only is it important to keep your building’s ventilation system clean and running smoothly, allowing it to remove the pollutants from the indoor air, but that monitoring CO2 levels indoors is also important for keeping employees healthy and productive. CO2 is not normally even considered as a pollutant, but the results if this study found that it should be considered an important one to address. Test scores decreased as CO2 levels neared 950 ppm (parts per million), which is a level considered acceptable by most building standards.
If you need the ventilation and HVAC system in your building inspected and cleaned to make sure it’s safe for your employees, contact a Hughes Environmental representative to see how we can help.
Hughes Environmental is a National Air Duct Cleaner’s Association (NADCA) certified company who has earned their prestigious “Outstanding Safety Award” every year that we’ve been in business.
Our technicians are expertly trained on the most up-to-date industry standards for cleaning commercial HVAC systems, and are equipped to clean from the point the air enters the system all the way to where it exits.
We are also a member of the National Fire Protection Association, the National Air Duct Cleaners’ Association, and the American Society of Safety Engineers. In addition, our technicians have been through OSHA 10- or 30-hour training and have Council-certified Indoor Environmentalists (CIE) and Council-certified Microbial Remediators (CMR) on staff.