Sick building syndrome.

Headaches? Your Office Could Be the Culprit

You're sitting at your desk, slightly stiff from a long session staring at the computer screen. It's 4 p.m., and that headache is back. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you weren't so unusually fatigued and didn't have that tinge of nausea and slight dizziness--and that terrible stuffy nose.

What is it? Quite possibly, "sick building syndrome." Other discomforts experienced by workers in sick buildings include dry or irritated throats, itching or burning eyes and skin irritations. Richard Gorman, assistant chief of hazard evaluation and technical assistance at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), suggests asking these questions: Are your symptoms recurrent, do you feel better when you leave the office? Are other people complaining?

Public awareness of indoor air quality, especially inside today's tightly sealed, energy-efficient buildings, has been growing. "We've certainly had a lot of complaints, but it's frustrating since we can rarely pinpoint a direct cause of health problems from poor office environments," says Dave Sundin of NIOSH.

Public concern officially came of age with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration's (OSHA) recently proposed indoor atmosphere regulations for non-industrial workplaces. OSHA estimates that 21 million of the 70 million Americans who work indoors are subjected to poor air quality.

The OSHA proposals--particularly the provision that requires employers to provide separately ventilated smoking rooms--have been quite controversial, with the department receiving as many as 100,000 letters. Many of the letters oppose the smoking proposals, the most sweeping restrictions on workplace tobacco use ever. According to OSHA head Joseph Dear, 12 of the letters were so threatening as to imply death threats and were turned over to the FBI.

The proposed OSHA rules focus on making sure that ventilation systems work, and involve most work space activities. Affected employers have to come up with compliance plans committing them to regular maintenance and inspection of heat and air-conditioning systems, upgrading of ventilation systems in relation to staff increases, repairing of all non-opening windows, and 24-hour prior notification when chemicals are being used in a work space, or when renovation is to take place.

OSHA's Debra Janes, rulemaking project officer, says that tracking a case of sick building syndrome is difficult. "If you test for biological effects, you may have a mixture of things, none of which is above toxic levels, and yet you have people complaining. All the conditions in the building taken together, rather than any one taken separately, add up to sick building syndrome."

The NIOSH list of possible contributing culprits includes chemicals from office materials and mechanical equipment, tobacco smoke, microbiological contaminants and outside air pollutants. Janes specifically points to dust from wood, carpets and paper, chemicals from carbonless forms, molds in the ventilation system, formaldehyde in carpet adhesives, ozone, and particulates created by copy machines. "The surfaces of the building absorb the chemicals, and then when the temperature and the relative humidity change, they can release them, and you get a cycle," Janes says.

Both OSHA and NIOSH recognize factors beyond airborne pollutants in contributing to sick building syndrome. Says NIOSH's Gorman, "There is a host of other things that people don't commonly think of, like proper ergonomic design of work stations and work-related stress. Indoor air quality is only one of the factors involved in indoor environmental quality."

For Marcia Sawnor, an industrial hygienist with the Rochester, New York-based engineering firm Erdman Anthony and a veteran indoor air quality investigation manager, the biggest factor in ensuring good air is the proper operation of a building's ventilation system. "In all of the studies I've done, that was the ultimate culprit," she says. A common problem, Sawnor notes, is a system that is simply not delivering enough air because it it has not been properly cleaned and maintained or because individual workers have closed air vents that were blowing uncomfortably on them. Such bothersome air flow should be redirected, Sawnor says, with an added shield if necessary--but never cut off. Closing vents reduces the air flow for everyone in the office.

Though most observers praise OSHA for acting, not all are confident that the agency's rules will "cure" sick buildings. "I think that OSHA will probably get bogged down in details," said Vera Doyle of the Air Resources Information Clearinghouse in Rochester, New York. "There will probably be an improvement, but it will be difficult because of the many problems."

In 1989, when the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) renovated its New York offices, it took its own environment seriously. "We were very thorough," said NRDC's Karen O'Malley. "We put in a ventilation system that circulates the air three to five times more often than other systems. We installed 100 percent wool carpeting that was tacked down to avoid the fumes from carpet glue. All of the cabinets and office furniture were specially sealed to prevent formaldehyde and other chemical compounds from seeping out of the wood. People spend up to 90 percent of their time indoors, and they should realize that the indoor atmosphere can affect them tremendously."

Hearings on OSHA's proposals were concluded last October and final rules are expected by the Spring of 1996.

Contact: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, DSDTT/IRAS, MS-C-19, 4676 Columbia Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45226/(800) 35-NIOSH; EPA Indoor Air Pollution Hotline: [phone].