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…
By Joseph G. Allen, P. MacNaughton, U. Satish, S. Santanam, J. Vallarino, J. Spengler. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2015
831 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Background: The indoor built environment plays a critical role in our overall well-being because of both the amount of time we spend indoors (~90%) and the ability of buildings to positively or negatively influence our health. The advent of sustainable design or green building strategies reinvigorated questions regarding the specific factors in buildings that lead to optimized conditions for health and productivity. Objective: We simulated indoor environmental quality (IEQ) conditions in “Green” and “Conventional” buildings and evaluated the impacts on an objective measure of human performance: higher-order cognitive function. Methods: Twenty-four participants spent 6 full work days (0900–1700 hours) in an environmentally controlled office space, blinded to test conditions. On different days, they were exposed to IEQ conditions representative of Conventional [high concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs)] and Green (low concentrations of VOCs) office buildings in the United States. Additional conditions simulated a Green building with a high outdoor air ventilation rate (labeled Green+) and artificially elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels independent of ventilation. Results: On average, cognitive scores were 61% higher on the Green building day and 101% higher on the two Green+ building days than on the Conventional building day (p < 0.0001). VOCs and CO2 were independently associated with cognitive scores. Conclusions: Cognitive function scores were significantly better under Green+ building conditions than in the Conventional building conditions for all nine functional domains. These findings have wide-ranging implications because this study was designed to reflect conditions that are commonly encountered every day in many indoor environments. Citation: Allen JG, MacNaughton P, Satish U, Santanam S, Vallarino J, Spengler JD. 2016. 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. Environ Health Perspect 124:805–812; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1510037
Subfields: Building and Construction, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6043a89a58f705f1903012dadd4a59155e4be1bc
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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
Citations in the corpus
- Exploring the physiological, neurophysiological and cognitive performance effects of elevated carbon dioxide concentrations indoors (2019, methodology): “Significant reductions in decision making performance using the Strategic Management Software have been recorded after 4 h exposure to CO2 concentrations of 1400–2500 ppm achieved by continuously injecting pure CO2 into a well ventilated room (ventilation rate 720m3/ h) [7,8].”
- Biophilic Design for Restorative University Learning Environments: A Critical Review of Literature and Design Recommendations (2020, background): “Enhanced ventilation has been proven to improve cognitive function scores [88] and operable windows facilitate the non-rhythmic sensory stimuli biophilic pattern and encourage experience of multi-sensory aspects of nature which improve restoration more effectively.”