A new study found that offices that are poorly ventilated lowers the performance of its employees by affecting her concentration and decision making abilities.
According to a research conducted by U.S. scientists, poorly-ventilated office buildings affect the concentration and decision-making abilities of the employees which lowers their performance levels. Improper ventilation leads to the accumulation of high amount of carbon dioxide in class rooms and in offices, which generally accommodates by a large number of people in a small space.
Scientists at the State University of New York and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California found that "carbon dioxide concentrations in offices don't normally exceed 1,000 ppm, except in meeting rooms, where people gather for long hours. Mayb be that's why it becomes difficult to stay up for a meeting!"
"In our field we have always had a dogma that carbon dioxide, at the levels we find in buildings, is just not important and doesn't have any direct impact on people," study co-author and Berkeley scientist William Fisk was quoted as saying by Mail Online. "So these results, which were quite unambiguous, were surprising."
"Previous studies have looked at 10,000 ppm and 20,000 ppm; that's the level at which scientists thought effects started," added Dr Fisk's colleague and co-author Mark Mendell. "That's why these findings are so startling."
Not just the working people, but students can also be affected by this if they are made to sit in poorly ventilated classrooms.
"As there's a drive for increasing energy efficiency, there's a push for making buildings tighter and less expensive to run," Dr. Mendell said. "There's some risk that, in that process, adverse effects on occupants will be ignored. If people can't think or perform as well, that could obviously have adverse economic impacts."
The study was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
