Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate CO2 Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance
By U. Satish, M. Mendell, K. Shekhar, T. Hotchi, D. Sullivan, S. Streufert, W. Fisk. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2012
985 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Background: Associations of higher indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations with impaired work performance, increased health symptoms, and poorer perceived air quality have been attributed to correlation of indoor CO2 with concentrations of other indoor air pollutants that are also influenced by rates of outdoor-air ventilation. Objectives: We assessed direct effects of increased CO2, within the range of indoor concentrations, on decision making. Methods: Twenty-two participants were exposed to CO2 at 600, 1,000, and 2,500 ppm in an office-like chamber, in six groups. Each group was exposed to these conditions in three 2.5-hr sessions, all on 1 day, with exposure order balanced across groups. At 600 ppm, CO2 came from outdoor air and participants’ respiration. Higher concentrations were achieved by injecting ultrapure CO2. Ventilation rate and temperature were constant. Under each condition, participants completed a computer-based test of decision-making performance as well as questionnaires on health symptoms and perceived air quality. Participants and the person administering the decision-making test were blinded to CO2 level. Data were analyzed with analysis of variance models. Results: Relative to 600 ppm, at 1,000 ppm CO2, moderate and statistically significant decrements occurred in six of nine scales of decision-making performance. At 2,500 ppm, large and statistically significant reductions occurred in seven scales of decision-making performance (raw score ratios, 0.06–0.56), but performance on the focused activity scale increased. Conclusions: Direct adverse effects of CO2 on human performance may be economically important and may limit energy-saving reductions in outdoor air ventilation per person in buildings. Confirmation of these findings is needed.
Subfields: Building and Construction, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/309e7ebea6e880cd2393bc38596933813022d335
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Citations in the corpus
- Simultaneous effects of irrelevant speech, temperature and ventilation rate on performance and satisfaction in open-plan offices ☆ (2015, background): “In contrast, decision-making performance has been shown to decline by high carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations (Satish et al., 2012).”
- Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers: A Controlled Exposure Study of Green and Conventional Office Environments (2015, methodology): “However, this conventional thinking is being challenged as the evidence mounts for CO2 as a direct pollutant, not just a marker for other pollutants (Satish et al. 2012).”
- Interactions and comprehensive effect of indoor environmental quality factors on occupant satisfaction (2020, background): “30 negatively impact performance on complex cognitive tasks [51,57], whereas others have found that CO2 did not impact performance on simpler cognitive tasks or perceived IAQ [52,58].”
- Exploring the physiological, neurophysiological and cognitive performance effects of elevated carbon dioxide concentrations indoors (2019, methodology): “2260 ppm [12] 2500 ppm [7] or 3000 ppm [1,2,9].”