Is Your Dumb Building Making You Dumber Too

Poor air quality makes for poor working conditions, and the New York Times is on it.

The New York Times asks, Is conference room air making you dumber? Veronique Greenwood writes:

Given that I write about how much I like dumb houses and dumb boxes and dumb cities, I was not crazy about dumb building syndrome. But I do like green building certification systems that look at what’s in the air in our buildings, and set limits on them. Just look at the results from Joseph Allan’s testing, comparing conventional, green, and super green buildings.

Greenwood’s article just talks about CO2 but it is more complicated than that. CO2 is a good indicator of what’s going on, but Volatile Organic Compounds from the building materials matter, and from perfumes and body odour and food. She quotes Joseph Allan, who tells her that “what we saw were these striking, really quite dramatic impacts on decision-making performance, when all we did was make a few minor adjustments to the air quality in the building,” but Allan pumped a lot more into the offices than just CO2; we quoted him:

If you want to be wide awake and comfortable at your desk or in your meeting, all of these things matter. Greenwood concludes that “without a specialized sensor, you can’t realistically know how much carbon dioxide is building up while you hunker down in a small room for a long meeting.”

Or, you can make sure you are working in a green building certified by LEED or WELL, which have lots of fresh filtered air, low VOCs, and constant CO2 monitoring. Just opening the door isn’t enough.