下午5:36
Green office environments linked with higher cognitive function scores
下午5:36A recent study conducted at Harvard University shows that buildings with better air quality significantly improves people’s productiv...
A recent study conducted at Harvard University shows that buildings with better air quality significantly improves people’s productivity.
Green office environments linked with higher cognitive function scores
For immediate release: October
26, 2015
Boston, MA – People who work in well-ventilated offices with
below-average levels of indoor pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO2) have significantly higher cognitive functioning
scores—in crucial areas such as responding to a crisis or developing
strategy—than those who work in offices with typical levels, according to a new
study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, SUNY Upstate Medical University,
and Syracuse University.
The researchers looked at
people’s experiences in “green” vs. “non-green” buildings in a double-blind
study, in which both the participants and the analysts were blinded to test
conditions to avoid biased results. The findings suggest that the indoor
environments in which many people work daily could be adversely affecting
cognitive function—and that, conversely, improved air quality could greatly
increase the cognitive function performance of workers.
The study was published October 26, 2015 in Environmental Health Perspectives.
“We have been ignoring the 90%.
We spend 90% of our time indoors and 90% of the cost of a building are the
occupants, yet indoor environmental quality and its impact on health and
productivity are often an afterthought,” said Joseph Allen, assistant professor
of exposure assessment science, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at
the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment, and lead author of
the study. “These results suggest that even modest improvements to indoor
environmental quality may have a profound impact on the decision-making
performance of workers.”
Researchers wanted to look at
the impact of ventilation, chemicals, and carbon dioxide on workers’ cognitive
function because, as buildings have become more energy efficient, they have
also become more airtight, increasing the potential for poor indoor
environmental quality. Building-related illnesses and “sick building syndrome”
were first reported in the 1980s as ventilation rates decreased. In response,
there has been an emphasis on sustainable design—“green” buildings that are
energy efficient and are also designed to enhance indoor environmental quality.
The researchers designed this study to identify the specific attributes of
green building design that influence cognitive function, an objective measure
of productivity.
In the new study, researchers
utilized a double-blinded, repeated measures design to look at the
decision-making performance of 24 participants—including architects, designers,
programmers, engineers, creative marketing professionals, and managers—while
they worked in a controlled office environment at the Total Indoor
Environmental Quality (TIEQ) Laboratory at the Syracuse Center of Excellence in
Environmental and Energy Systems.
For six days in November 2014, while
the participants performed their normal work, the researchers exposed them to
various simulated building conditions: conventional conditions with relatively
high concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as those emitted
from common materials in offices; green conditions with low VOC concentrations;
green conditions with enhanced ventilation (dubbed “green+”); and conditions
with artificially elevated levels of CO2, independent of ventilation. At the end of each day, they conducted cognitive
testing on the participants.
They found that cognitive
performance scores for the participants who worked in the green+ environments
were, on average, double those of participants who worked in conventional
environments; scores for those working in green environments were 61% higher.
Measuring nine cognitive function domains, researchers found that the largest
improvements occurred in the areas of:
- crisis response (97% higher scores in green
conditions and 131% higher in green+)
- strategy (183% and 288% higher)
- information usage (172% and 299% higher)
In addition, when researchers
looked at the effect of CO2—not normally thought of as a
direct indoor pollutant—they found that, for seven of the nine cognitive
functions tested, average scores decreased as CO2 levels increased to levels commonly observed in many indoor
environments.
Other Harvard Chan School authors
of the study included John D. Spengler,
Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Health and Human Habitation, doctoral student
Piers MacNaughton, SM ’14, and project engineer Jose Vallarino. Suresh Santanam,
associate professor at Syracuse University and associate director of the
Syracuse University Center of Excellence, also was an author.
Funding for the study came from
United Technologies Corp. and from NIEHS environmental epidemiology training
grant 5T32ES007069-35 to MacNaughton.
“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,” Joseph G. Allen, Piers MacNaughton, Usha
Satish, Suresh Santanam, Jose Vallarino, John D. Spengler, Environmental Health Perspectives, October 26, 2015,
doi: 10.1289/ehp.1510037
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