Sick Building Syndrome | Hacker News Reader

Sick Building Syndrome

nhs.uk

116 pointswensley117 comments

I worked in a building like this. Over the year I worked in that office, my asthma got gradually worse and worse. I went from using my rescue inhaler maybe once every couple months (for minor cough/discomfort), to using it multiple times per day just to breathe. Inhaled steroids (Advair Diskus) were added to my asthma prescriptions. Eventually I could barely get through the day without prolonged fits of coughing and multiple asthma attacks.

Went to the doctor again, got diagnosed with bronchitis, sent home with prescription cough medicine and even more steroids (prednisone) and was told not to work for at least a week. Got better.

Started coughing again within 30 minutes of entering the building when I went back to work. Then put together that with the fact that I always felt a little better after my lunch breaks to realize it was the building itself making me sick.

We were getting ready to move to a larger office anyway, so got permission to work from home when necessary until the move. We moved offices, my coughing stopped. I discontinued all the steroids and now am back to using my rescue inhaler almost never.

I can't imagine the building had no effect on anyone else, but I definitely got the worst of it. No one else got sick the way I did.

The building itself was a historic building, a Firestone car repair place that had been retro-fitted to be an office. It was built in 1927, and then sat empty since the 1950s, until it was renovated in 2014.

In addition to mold, mildew, and pollen, a lot of people are allergic to various types of critters and their droppings. I don't want to think about what can accumulate over 50 years in an empty building.

There are lots of buildings, with a dark history. Glue used for the carpet that constantly exhales solvents- its especially horrible if your building was a industrial site before. Those brick buildings near trainstations, that where formerly train maintenance sheds are particularly horrible, as the oil in most trains was highly carcinogenic and seeped right into the brick during maintenance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_oil#Polychlorinate... Always read up on the history of the building you are working in.

Also, always google industrial scandals in the local news-paper- usually they just rebuild right over spill sites- and the stuff smells up after rain.

Use scientific methods to measure air flow and quality (CO2), and humidity. You want around 50% humidity and CO2 to be below 700 ppm. CO2 doesn't directly measure air quality, only how often that air is changed. The more like outside (around 300 ppm) the better. 35% or lower humidity will effect your your skin and mucous membrane. A dried out mucous membrane makes it easier to catch a cold. And dried out skin leads to cracks and itching. But too high humidity 80% + is also bad. If the temperature between outside and inside differs more then 7 degrees C, it's enough to effect the humidity, for example if it's cold outside, the cold air expand, leading to less relative water. You can get a humidifier or dehumidifier to control humidity, and use ventilation to control air ventilation. Then there's also temperature, you want around 20-23 C to be comfortable, but I guess you already figured that one =)

for example if it's cold outside, the cold air expand, leading to less relative water.

Isn’t it more about the ability of warmer air to hold more water versus the expansion of colder air?

Relative humidity is percentage of water (versus saturation) at that temperature.

If you have 50% humidity at 50F, and heat the air to 70F, that becomes 27% relative humidity.[1]

[1]https://www.lenntech.com/calculators/humidity/relative-humid...

I think it's both.

I recently bought a CO2 monitor, and found that my girlfriend's apartment is regularly over 1200 ppm. Is there anything I can do about this issue? We can't just open the windows as it currently ~40F outside.

First check if existing ventilation works. In (old) apartments, leaky doors and windows works as intake, and air go out from toilets and kitchen ventilation. Hold a toilet paper tissue at the outtake in the toilet or kitchen, the air flow should be big enough so that the paper get stuck. If it doesn't - try opening the door or windows. If it helped to open the door, or window, you can install window ventilation, which is basically a hole with an adjustable opening. If opening the window doesn't help you need to move the air mechanically by installing a fan in the kitchen outtake and/or the toilet. A fan might solve the problem for you, but might push the air (and smell) into someone else's apartment ... so it's best to work with the rest of the house, and do a whole house solution, sometimes it's as easy as cleaning the ventilation channel, as birds love buildings nests in them because warm air make it cosy.

You probably have ventilation, but opening the windows is the ventilation procedure in large parts of the world. In lots of buildings even in Europe you simply do that every day, no matter if it's -20 C or +40 C. Massive waste of heat in the winter at least.

You could get a bunch of plants. They probably won't solve the problem outright, but they are a good first step.

Take a look at heat recovery ventilation. The simplest options are installed into basically a hole in the wall.

This is a very well written comment.

It made me curious: what kind of training would one receive to be able to know what to scientifically check for in a building? Building biologist?

Thanks!

Can anyone recommend a method to be happy in a depressing office for 40 hours? I am an outdoorsy active person and it is very hard to code in the coldly manufactured cubicle that I must stay in. Window view is very minimal, walls are drab, workplace has no fun activities whatsoever, coworkers are quiet at least, but not welcoming or fun. I just feel spending so much time in that confined space really hurts my coding and mental game.

I know it's a crappy answer, but "change jobs".

Making a dysfunctional situation work is way more difficult than just finding a different situation. The good thing is that compared to folks who are plumbers or truck drivers or cooks, it's much easier to do that for folks working on code.

It is wholly anecdotal, but the biggest quality of life improvement I've ever had was finding a full-time, 100% remote job that had good boundaries on how much work was expected.

At this point, I've negotiated the workload to 30 hours a week and I can sit in an environment that I've setup with only my personal needs in mind. The pay and benefits are not as good as they would be for the same job with a larger company, but the work is still fun and interesting and expectations on quality are very high.

I had to join a climbing gym because I want to find folks to socialize with, but that's had a lot of other good benefits.

The easy answer is change jobs. You don’t have to stay anywhere, and you presumably have one of the easiest skills to find work with today.

If you actually want mechanisms for being happy no matter what, start realising that none of the stuff you’re stating as issues actually matters, and you can work on accepting that. What does the walls have to do with your happiness? You control if you’re happy or not.

Stoicism-like ideas and reading can help (or at least do for me, minus the religious bits) with realising that external factors do not matter for your happiness. Happiness is 100% controlled by your mind. There are unhappy people who have all the things you say you lack and way more, and there are happy people who have none of them, and are in situations that are objectively way worse than yours, so the state of material things is not the defining factor for your happiness. The defining factor is you and how you choose to react to external things.

Ask for laptop, work next to Windows. Ask for work at home days, remote in. No luck? Design on paper first, write out your ideas. Spend time in sun outside writing. Wear graphics like headphones, listen to music, get a "sunlight" lamp. Bring a space heater, wear heavier shirts/sweaters.

You might need to be the fun person. Invite the team on a hike, plan a picnic. Set a timer, 8 hours in? Just leave

I don't want to suggest "change jobs". However: if you can't find a way to make your work better. Set an end date and go for three drastic change. If you can, move to a new city. Downsize your current living situation.

+1 on change jobs/employer/go remote.

If this is not feasible it could be that you 'just' need to change the room/floor/corner of the building. Perhaps move closer to a window. Something facing West will give you natural light after 11am, or East for the early walk-ins.

I remember I was working in one of them new skyscrappers in London a few months ago. We were given a meeting room so the whole team can stick together for a massive project. The room's name was "engine room". EVERYONE was sick all the time. The room was cold, with minimal light, and we were pulling 12 hours shifts in there. The £ was great, but we all almost got pneumonia.

When that project was finished and we were "free" to wander on other floors (or work remotely), I found a desk right next to the windows and haven't coughed since.

Someone else suggested stoicism. Try meditating, take walking breaks (helps warm you up). Take a week cut all caffeine.

You have to careful with stoicism. If you have nothing that feeds your soul then stoicism can also deplete your psychological reserves. There are plenty of stories of high ranking Buddhist teachers who had a breakdown after many years because they just pretended to be OK with their circumstances but deep down weren't.

I used to work from home but the last 6 years I have worked in an office with brown cubes, no windows, tons of useless meetings, noise and I more and more realize that this is starting to eat me up from the inside. I think I am pretty good at dealing with adversity, I live healthily, I exercise, I meditate, but this is slowly killing my spirit and my motivation. I don't think changing my attitude would help.

Why a laptop the ergonomics are so much better with a dual screen proper keyboard and mouse.

I'm not suggesting get comfortable at your desk. My goal was how to get away from the bad office space

I'd put up a photo montage around your desk of outdoorsy things, and bring in a small floor mat tiled with pebbles then take your shoes off while you work and just rest your feet on the pebbles. That might produce enough sensory stimulation to keep you from going crazy.

Plants, lots of plants. Cactus also good, least back in the CRT days as they helped absorb emissions.

This and headphones with your music.

Also and above all, do take regular breaks and plenty of virtual cigarettes (as in going thru the process but not smoking - as in just get out of the office for a few minutes).

> Cactus also good, least back in the CRT days as they helped absorb emissions.

I've never heard of this; could you elaborate? What health-relevant emissions do CRTs give out, and how would having a cactus in the vicinity of the CRT help?

https://emfacademy.com/5-indoor-plants-that-absorb-radiation...

Got any actual sources? That link pushes a fearmongering agenda, and repeatedly mentions a "NASA study" without ever referencing it. It sounds like they're referencing the infamous NASA Clean Air Study, except that didn't examine radioprotective properties of plants. And that doesn't make sense anyway, because the radioprotective benefit is only conferred if you consume the plant.

EDIT: read through more of the link, and it's total bullshit. A representatively BS quote, brackets mine:

> Because of the spider plants amazing abilities at cleaning out pollution [completely false extrapolation of the Clean Air Study], it is also believed to be effective at absorbing forms of radiation in the home [WTF?]

Back in the day I developed a Palm app for taking virtual smoking breaks:

https://i.imgur.com/7FlQ6Bj.jpg

Came to say just this. Also, add a desk-lamp with a solar-immitating/"daylight" spectrum. (In the bad old days of incandescent bulbs that was one of the blue "daylight" bulbls. I don't know what the LED equivalent would be.)

Have a look at the Phillips range at any popular electronics store. You can have any colour you like (except black)

It's really nice to have an easy to maintain plant like a snake plant to talk to. It can really change your mood in an otherwise uncomfortable place.

You talk to a plant at work?

When Sun Microsystems fell apart into SunSoft, SunLabs, etc, Scott McNealy called an all-hands meeting and gave everyone a pep-talk, and said there would be some big changes, so nobody should be hugging their tree. He repeated that several times, making tree hugging gestures to emphasize what we were not supposed to do: No Tree Hugging!!!

So I went to my manager and complained that I never got a tree. I promised not to hug it, but I insisted that I wanted my own tree, too.

Hey, that guy is talking to a plant - what a weirdo.

Anyway, rubber duck, as I was saying...

You should have seen my wife when I took my baby's rubber duck (one of the many) and started talking to it. I had to show her the wiki page [1] to convince her I am not (completely) crazy.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Plant, fidget spinner, stress balls, Lego, abacus etc. Bouncing a foam ball off my keyboard (not the keys, the hard bit at the top) onto my monitor. That is much worse for my workmates than a one-way floral chat.

As the rock-star programmer I am, I like to dance while I code. Jokes asides, it does get more blood to your brain and work becomes more fun. If coworkers find it annoying, just ask for your own office. But be careful if you have a funny manager or you might get an elevated glass cubicle.

See if you can work remote 1 day a week. Some employers are inflexible about this, but if your work can be done remotely, you might see huge gains from switching up your environment now and then. When you come back to the office you will be refreshed and able to focus on tasks like meetings, social calls, etc that are well suited for cube farms.

I always find "office activities" incredibly awful. Nothing like having an icecream social when everyone still steaming from work they should be focusing on. However, you could try starting an office pool for bagels, cookie of the month club, or whatever. It might be a nice diversion that improves your morale and takes little time away from work.

I hope someone with authority over their company's office leasing/layout planning see's this and the various replies- th overwhelming sentiment is approximately "engineers hate dreary corporate office design to the point where they'll quit over it."

Set up an office in a nice building with high-quality architecture[1] and you'll be able to retain a much higher degree of engineer, per-dollar. Maybe the tradeoff doesn't work in SF's insane property market, but anywhere else it seems like a no-brainer.

[1] Which for some reason almost always means buildings that are more than half a century old- our culture has gone big into the dreary corporate office building thing.

I am in the same situation. I think the only way is to change companies or even change career.

Anecdotal quick fix: Adding a sit/stand desk[0] and regularly switching posture throughout the day has personally resulted in significant improvements both mentally and physically.

[0]https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=122&cp_id=12240&cs_id...

Daylight lamps make a big difference to my mood. Placing on of those on the side of your desk may help with mood and making the working space feel less cooped up.

Plants are also a great idea. If you have a fixed desk location you can get pretty elaborate with fairly high-maintenance potted plants (since you're next to them all the time).

Scheduling exercise during your lunch break, if possible, should also help.

I have found that adding white, sun-like light, using LED bars for example can help. One can't easily simulate sun light but I found adding several light sources, at least 4 can make a difference. In my experience, working in bursts with "strong" breaks help, for example grabbing a cup of coffee and spending 10min outside every 1.5h.

> coworkers are quiet at least, but not welcoming or fun

At my current job, I'm making an effort to invite my coworkers to lunch once or twice a week. Chances are they feel just as unwelcomed as you do. It only takes one person to break the ice, and it makes a difference.

Follow the 4 hour work week method and escape the office? :D

From my experience, move to Missoula. Go running through the woods at lunch and work from home on occasion. It’s really a great place to live and work.

Sadly, the only way I’ve found to mitigate this, is to leave the company. Complain about it first though - maybe they will spot the correlation eventually.

An actual recommendation I got from a boss once: act dumber. If you look around, it actually works!

VR goggles?

You can set it up so that it seems your desktop is on a sunny beach, or a mountain peak, a train, ...

Make sure you step outside for lunch everyday, even if you pack your own lunch.

Maybe a longish walk at lunchtime? Depends on where the office is of course.

I remember in HP/Compaq offices in Houston when we wanted to take a break, we were going for a walk; anyone who has been in those HQ knows what I mean. A 45mins (slow) walk around the entire thing, and you could see anything from boring offices to assembly lines from that promenade!

change your job to something different. if in a year or so you don't like it. change again. Change into a job where its social.

Buy yourself a nice plant

Get a remote job?

It sounds like you are in the wrong profession.

It sounds like he is in the wrong office (for him). Not all offices are like this.

The productive ones are. He's complaining that it's inside and that people work quietly.

Nonsense. He is complaining that everything is drab and no window view. I work under similar circumstances and I feel more and more that these two things are slowly eating me up. this has nothing to do with productivity.

He's not complaining that it's inside, he's complaining that it feels cold and impersonal and there's not enough windows. Better furnishing and more natural light can make a real difference.

Literature Review – Microbial Growth in Buildings

http://paradigmchange.me/building-literature/

Health Effects of Moldy Buildings – Sick Building Syndrome

http://paradigmchange.me/buildings-sbs/

Health Effects of Moldy Buildings

http://paradigmchange.me/buildings/

I suffered from a wide variety of issues (inflammatory symptoms, weight loss, extreme fatigue, severe joint issues, gastro etc...) when living in a moldy house. At first I was sceptical that mold could be the cause because there is no scientific or medical consensus established for mold and the huge list of symptoms I was experiencing.

My GP tested me for Aspergillus antibodies and I came back very high. My GP remained open-minded and went along with treating me with cholestyramine (a binder that can supposedly bind up mold spores, according to the "Shoemaker Protocol") and I'm gradually getting better. My Aspergillus antibodies have dropped significantly. I'm functionally 80% better now but I still have a bit of a road to travel to return to how I was feeling before all of this happened. I generally avoid discussing this too deeply with friends because I know they would be sceptical (as indeed I would be if I had not experienced it directly).

It's difficult to explain how it feels to be in a situation where you've been healthy for your whole life and you suddenly come down with a whole host of symptoms in your late 20s for which doctors can find no biological markers. You get used to recognising the "internal eye roll" from doctors when you list your symptoms. It wasn't mentioned directly but you can tell they are dismissing it as either hypochondria or depression (I have no history of either and never even visited a GP before any of this started). The most positive thing that I can take from these last couple of years is that it has thought me a much higher level of empathy for other people and their experiences.

While familiarity equals believability, we lose.

Humanity is fucking helpless this way.

@everyone: Prove me wrong, please.

How prevalent was the mold in your house ?

My shower leaked quite badly, whenever I used it then water would drip from the ceiling below. I did my best to seal it up and forgot about it. Then, I was away on holidays for 6 weeks during the cold months here in Ireland. The heating was kept off and there was no natural ventilation in the house. There was quite a bit of mold on the ceiling when I arrived back but nothing horrendous. I cleaned up the surface mold with some bleach as best I could and then painted over it.

There was a very slight musty odour in the house that I masked with fragrances but mostly I forgot about it. Over the next year I started to develop a lot of non-specific symptoms.

I never even considered that the mold could be an issue until I started googling for a really weird symptom that I was having. Everytime I touched something grounded I would get a static shock, it was happening all day long. Anytime I touched a shelf in a supermarket or even if my touched my girlfriend's forehead (depending on the shoes she was wearing and the surface of the floor).

What was happening here was that the serum osmolality was very high (311 mmol/kg). Essentially there were too many electrolytes in my blood and these salts were being excreted onto my skin giving my skin a positive charge. Googling around led me to an interview between Chris Kresser and Dr. Shoemaker who highlighted it as a red flag for people suffering with mold issues.

Could you visibly see the mold?

Yes, in my case. It is not always the case though.

Yes, the lack of any mention of mold as a possible cause stuck out to me. Especially as this is a UK organization - they have rugs in bathrooms, for crying out loud!

Edit: And by 'rugs' I mean 'carpets', of course. The idea apparently baffles me so, I can't even find words.

Erm, that is by no means universal or common in the UK. I don’t think I've seen bathroom carpet since the 80s. Most bathrooms here have either tiles, wood or vinyl lino in my experience.

Mostly ceramic tiles in my experience, or lino in budget e.g. student accommodation. I've rarely seen wood in the UK, presumably because it is prone to water damage. The problem with tiles though is that they do get very cold underfoot, hence the popularity of "bath and pedestal" mat sets. I did have a place with rubber flooring in the bathroom, and that was nice because it was non-slip, easy to clean, and not so cold underfoot. But I don't think I've seen a full fitted carpet in a bathroom since I last saw an avocado bathroom suite.

My partners mother got rid of her avocado bathroom last month. There's still a few floating around.

For wood, plenty of tenements in Edinburgh still have wooden flooring in the bathrooms (every one I've lived in until now has)

Years ago when I rented, many apartments had carpets in the bathrooms. I hated it. I have a nice tiled cottage floor now, non-porous stone.

I don't understand why people carpet bathrooms, and not all British people do this.

If you go to retirement communities in the US you will notice way more carpeted bathrooms. They fall and it is much better to fall on carpet than a hard surface.

People don't like walking on cold floors in winter, so carpets get tried in all kinds of places they don't belong.

It's the Burberry bath mat sets that get me. Silly chavs! ;)

https://itdayshop.com/collections/bath-mat-set/products/burb...

Anecdotally, this can happen without it being the building per se.

When I worked in a cubicle farm, cubicles were not necessarily cleaned out if someone left. I have serious health issues, including respiratory problems, and I'm very sensitive to dust, germs, etc. My immediate boss was asthmatic and yadda.

There was an abandoned cubicle very near both of us that had about two linear feet of papers in it. They were covered in a visible layer of dust. I concluded this was negatively impacting my health. I knew no one would believe me or care. Everyone always acts like I have an overactive imagination.

I began quietly carting the papers out. Anything still usable got redistributed and re-used. Anything in such bad shape it couldn't be mailed to customers got dumped in the recycling bins a handful at a time.

It probably took me a week or two to do this in small enough amounts at a time so that no one would notice what I was doing. My asthmatic boss was on like round three of antibiotics for bronchitis that wouldn't clear up. After all the musty, dusty papers were removed, she "coincidentally" finally got better.

And sometimes it's an entire city that's the problem. My girlfriend comes from a mountainous zone. We live in the city that I was born, a dusty place in the plains.

Guess what, within one year she developed respiratory problems. We are actually considering moving towns because it's literally impossible to get rid of the dust effectively, here.

I suspect a lot of it is caused by an emphasis on energy efficiency, which means tightly sealed rooms and HVAC that's set to recirculate the majority of air rather than bring in fresh air from outside. I've noticed that a lot of older buildings tend to have more fresh-air ventilation than newer ones for this reason.

It's energy efficiency, but also old buildings. They weren't designed with insulation & sealing in mind, and as a result can actually depend on leaking lots of heat to control condensation, mold & mildew. Seal them up and suddenly...

Newer buildings are designed with tightly sealed rooms & thick insulation in mind, and thus don't generally have big condensation problems.

Worked in 7 of them, million dollars of brand new buildings... Energy efficent buildings are efficient because they’re not as mild as they should be, always too cold in winter, always above 25° in summer (in actual on-the-desk thermometer measurement), lights switch off at set times when you still work and no proper way to override anything « because consumption would get out of the target ». Those building are built for the norms, not for the human inside. In fact they make you well notice that the human is the intruder. And they’re here for the next 30-70 years.

Yes. We run energy/thermal comfort simulations to figure out where it's reasonable to to impose thermal discomfort on our inhabitants. If our energy models tell us that there's one extreme week that will be really hot, but we can reduce the HVAC sizing (for cost and energy efficiency), I think it's prudent to do so. I always argue on the side of reducing energy whenever possible. That's a couple of days over the course of the year though, we're not imposing discomfort every day! The industry has also been shifting towards different thermal comfort models (PMV or Predicted Mean Vote to ATC Adaptive Thermal Comfort) which takes into account inhabitants changing their clothing (i.e removing sweater), using personal fans, opening windows to modify their environment for comfort.

FYI, I work in an office that actively uses all these strategies, and personally I don't mind it. Even if it's initially uncomfortable, human beings usually adapt to different thermal stresses in about two weeks of exposure. And yes, it does require some social/cultural shifts (in N. America especially) if you're expected to be a more active participant in making yourself feel thermally comfortable.

ETA: Clarifying thermal comfort strategies.

I think now they are starting to use air exchangers to bring in outside air while not losing as much heat/cold.

This is an odd perspective for me. Most buildings built from 1960's onward relied heavily on HVAC systems for conditioning the indoors. I would say the emphasis on energy efficiency has spurred the opposite, to reduce reliance on HVAC systems by taking advantage of passive energy strategies (daylighting, solar gain etc).

Also now we have much more progressive building codes specify some minimum rate of outdoor air flow (ventilation) to make sure the air doesn't get too stagnant.

Caveat: this works best if you're in a moderate climate or season, then the energy efficiency strategy will likely entail trying to take advantage of outdoor air for ventilation, and also for passive conditioning if possible. If you're in a in harsh climate, yes the HVAC engineers are going to try and recover conditioned air through recirculation.

Five Ways Tower[1] in Birmingham, UK has been closed for years because of this.

> The building is vacant due to the last tenants evacuating the building due to ill health amongst the workforce.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_Tower

I had terribly allergic rhinitis throughout my youth, but only at my family's home. When, after I moved out, my parents pulled out the carpet in my old bedroom, my allergies at that house vanished.

For me removal of carpets is the #1 thing to do if you have allergic rhinitis, especially if there are pets.

Carpets are awful breeding grounds.

I use low-cost area rugs which get shaken outside regularly or simply replaced.

I've nailed a few heavy-duty spring-loaded clamps to an elevated wood deck joist where I hang them for shaking and a day in the sun every couple weeks. Don't even have a vacuum cleaner anymore, it's a huge improvement in quality of life.

been there. landed a great job, loved the coding tasks, had great colleagues. the office was an open-plan one. seemed cold rightaway for me. sitting under a ventilation shaft, the cool air flowing was not pleasant but still liveable. cold all day long but also sweating at the same time as the office didnt seem to have oxygen. gasping out of a small kitchen window for air - one of few openable ones :) did some air vents hacking. 4 months i start to feel weird. cold empassing my bladder, lower stomach. total allergy to any airflow. took a -20 degree celsius sleeping bag to work. spending my days wrapped in it. didnt help. switching office desks to see if there's a chair i can sit at. the 40+ people in the open plan obviously see theres a nutcase in the building. my direct bosses are compassionate though. they see im not kidding. under-table-portable heating is suggested. geopathogenic zones are suggested existing in place. i go see doctors. im in pain, my bladder us killing me, doctors/urologists say everything is fine with me. i cant drive the subway because theres draught. i google sick building syndrome. us this really hapenning ? i quit. they let me go rightaway (thx) im fine in two weeks. havent experienced that since (6-7 years?) but been working in non-airconditioned buildings since then. fearing the moment a next job has similar fucked up problems. ill say bye bye right away, wont be waiting for months!!!

Offtopic, but it makes me really angry when I hear about people who are in constant pain, yet when they go to the doctor, they're told "you're perfectly healthy". No admission on the part of the physician that they're simply not all-knowing just "Your numbers are in range, therefore you must be perfectly healthy". It's getting to the point where you need a meta-doctor to tell you what doctor to go to for your problems... Your GP is kind of supposed to fill that role, but it's obvious there are many who don't see their job that way.

The only thing I can think of is mold-related, but at low enough concentration that it doesn't affect most people? Sounds like a spooky experience though

yeah, who knows. im not a fan of air conditioning. never been. maybe my mind just decided "youre not gonna spend your time here boy, open plan offices are nonsense" and it was all psychosomatic.

funny is the three months contract i had right before this experience was in winter and i had the pleasure to sit right next to a window having it open almost all the time facing my back, letting in precious oxygen. paradise ! so it was not cold air per-se.

to hell with open-plan & air conditioning!

Yours is a horror story about why non-architects absolutely must not attempt retrofitting abandoned warehouses into startup workplaces. The bullshit of calling it an "open-plan" office space is twofold: 1) there was obviously no actual plan to ensure the building was a healthy environment for human occupants and 2) you're describing a literal very large, closed box.

Yikes. I'm sorry that you had to experience that.

edit: I'm assuming the building you described used to be a warehouse. Obviously, I might be very wrong.

it was a new office building actually. a glass inferno :)

"Hi boss, I can't show up today, I have sick building syndrome. Actually, I won't be able to show up ever again."

I'd highly recommend buying a CO2/PM2.5 measurer and seeing what the levels are in your house or workplace. CO2 over 1,000 PPM has been linked to reduced cognitive performance. As an aside they function as excellent temperate and humidity readers for general use.

do you have one that you'd recommend?

This website has some tests for Dylos, Kaiterra Laser Egg and AirVisual: https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/are-cheap-particle-count...

I use the Plume Flow to measure PM2.5.(1)

Then I turn on my Coway AP-1512HH Mighty Air Purifier to clear the air up.

(1)https://flow.plumelabs.com/

> I use the Plume Flow

Uhm.. how?

"Shipping November 2018" and the order button is labeled "Pre-Order".

I'm a bit amazed - and disappointed - by how little information there is on that product page. The "tech specs" are size and weight and that's it, for this kind of product? Pretty much everything is missing that I would expect to know for this kind of product specifically. I even played the clip, still not a single piece of actually relevant information. The only sentence that says anything regarding the intended use is

> Flow measures real-time concentrations of NO2, VOC, PM2.5 and PM10: everything you need to understand your exposure and build healthy routines.

Given that they seem to target the "average person" they should probably explain somewhere what those abbreviations mean (I do, but what "average person" knows what VOC is?).

No way I would order given the lack of information, given that the price is $139 (or Euros).

After a quick search for similar products I found this comparison of several products (2016): http://energysmartohio.com/indoor-air-quality/which-indoor-a...

I've already received mine. They've been shipping the Plume Flow for a few months now, as you can see from these tweets of other customers:

https://twitter.com/mwt2008/status/1050499520176553985 https://twitter.com/BrianScifiFan/status/1040153420001370113

As I understand it, the Plume is meant for a more general audience so I don't mind that they don't define what VOCs are in their video. This device is mobile, which makes it more useful to me than the traditional indoor products.

More sensor tests: https://aqicn.org/sensor/

Awair

Up until around year 2000, very few buildings in Russia were built with artificial ventilation, and that with non-stop indoor smoking. Any "big box" building was survivable to me. Back then, it was thought as something normal, to the point that people regarded not having stuffy air and +26~ indoors as "cold and inhospitable."

This is one of reasons I don't like the country. I think, even today, when Russian people who never been abroad, come to America, the first thing they notice is how good is the ventilation indoors.

Typo *unsurvivable

Does anyone have any experience with air quality sensors what would easily tell me if the air in the building I'm in is bad along the lines of sick building syndrome?

Ideally some sensor that's relatively inexpensive and easy to use and connects to smart phone? There's several out there for home use but I'd love to carry around something that just told me constantly and also that was more than just particle density sensor.

I saw quite a few arduino sensors so you could build your own. I've linked a couple, but I haven't bought them yet.

https://www.amazon.com/KEYESTUDIO-Particle-Monitor-Arduino-R...

https://www.amazon.com/Keywish-Detector-Mega2560-Raspberry-B...

The first one does not have filter so it will count large particles, such as regular dust, too. This does not makes it useless but this should be taken into consideration.

Sorry, seems that similar sensors doesn't need filters and detect particle size ranges by intensity of scattered light. However, I can't find information about what sizes this sensor detects.

My father in law was the fire chief in a city where a locally famous government building was notorious for sick building syndrome in the 90s.

The building was and is a soulless cube farm with floors alternating in color from institutional green/gray/orange/blue.

It was 90% psychology, usually kicked off by a smell, anything from wet hair to popcorn to paint. They were medically evacuating a dozen people a day at the peak hysteria.

His solution was to park the fire truck and ambulance behind well out of site and respond in a UHaul truck. The fireman/paramedic left turnout gear behind and wore a hoodie over their uniform, and turned off radios. Once they did that, the calls went down to 1-2 a day and went away about a week after that.

Heh, now that I got reminded of this... I had throat pain for 7-8 weeks or so after moving into an old house. It would go away when I was away from home. There's no obvious mold, dust, moisture etc. problem; so I was about to schedule a professional air test, when the throat pain stopped and never came back. Also, my wife never had any problems.

What would you think that was? A temporary sick building? My only hypothesis is that I am allergic to something outside the house that is not there anymore now that it's fall. However, the plants around the house are basically the same stuff that's present everywhere around town.

Pollens tend to be very seasonal so it could be a specific type of pollen outside, or it could be due to an inadequately ventilated or insulated (and very hot) attic pushing stuff into the rest of the house during the summer months.

If you have lived in the same town for over five years without any issues then it probably is not pollen. In which case if you own the house then you can have someone check the attic ventilation, and schedule the hvac system to be cleaned out or replaced. If you rent then just plan on moving within a year.

It's so weird, I've had something like this at a co-working space I was at. Upper level smelled "musty" or something to me, and I felt half-sick every time I would spend a full day up there. Went to the lower level and was fine. When they consolidated to the upper level only, I went with, and my symptoms returned. It was so consistent that I had to leave, but I still feel weird about it...how come no one else was experiencing this? They couldn't smell the same smell and seem to be fine working there day in and day out. Am I really that hypersensitive?

I think carpets are the source of a lot of problems with office buildings. Carpets and problematic central air, with possible mold, bad filters, etc. In the US it is not possible to open the widows in these types of offices.

Reduced body movement, "conditioned" air, relatively stagnant airflow (even when turned by metal fans, not the quality air that has most recently blown through vegetation)

I'm surprised they didn't mention allergies. Dust mites and mold can cause many of these symptoms in people (this is what I deal with in my own apartment).

It would be interesting to see a comparison of office spaces broken down by age and type of HVAC ducting (or other types of heating in general such as radiators).

Central HVAC is like carpeting: a disease reservoir and vector.

FWIW, my house had central heating, forced air. I had the ducts regularly serviced, vacuumed.

I recently ripped out all the ductwork. The inside was still nasty. No wonder my allergies had never really improved. (Much better now with electric heaters.)

I try to not think about HVAC in offices. Newer is better, I suppose. Less time to absorb scuz.

Yeah, it's too bad that in so many homes the ductwork is inaccessible for cleaning.

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