Tobacco Documents Online

: s I ' When Your Offk Feeling woozy and'don't know why? It may be tht RYKAiHERINEGRIFFIN "tight" building, where occupants are completely dependent on a central vem t looked to be a good year far tilatiou system for the air they breathe James Miles. The software - and whatever gets into the ventilating company he'd started five system gets into the workers' lungs as years earlier. Phoenix Cnm- well. puters, had just moved into TheEnvironmentalProtectionAgen- fancy quarters on the 12th cy ranks indoor alr pollution - in both floor of a new highrise in El Se. homes and offices - as one of the five gundo. Callfornia most urgent environmental Issues fn the C ) It was an absolutely gor- I.nstedStates.Theagencyestmtatesthat ~geous building," Miles recalls. 30 to 75 million workers are at risk of get- "tt had all the amenities." Elegant mar ting sick because of the buildings they blelobby,plushcarpeting•LuxuriantpoP w'orkink ted plants. windows that sealed out not.se ome builtltngborne ailments can but let in plenty of natural Gght - evSeven be fatal.ln 1991, at lheSoctet enahtng that an entrepreneur on the Security Administration building way up could want Miles and his em~ in Richmond, an outbreak of Legiom p(oyees. the building's first tenanrs, seD naires' disease thought to be caused by a tled right in. buildup of bacteria ln the ventilanun But one Friday morning a few weeks s_vstem killed two worketss after the move. accountants Louise Other forms of indoor air pollution Aldrich and Pam Connollp were workcan cause asthma and a severe lung ming m,17drlch's office when suddenly flamma[ion called hypersensitivity they began gasping for breztn. They fled the raom. coughing and ehoking, eyes pneutnonitts. A small percentage of peo- burningandtearsstreamingdowntheir Ple exposed to contsminants in office cheeks. buildings develop multiple chemical sen. Over a three-day w'eekend. the two sitivity. a heightened vulnerability W aB kinds of chemical substances. a~omen recovered enough to return to Far more often. though, workers in work on Tuesday. But withm the next tw'oweeks•almos[everyoneintheoffice sealed structures suffer from the hard. began to feel sick. -People were getting topindown but debilitating symptams headaches," Miles recalls. "They were knownassickbuildingsyndrome.[none nauseated, losing coordination. The office, workers may experience dizzi- longer you stayed in the building, the ness. headaches, nausea, burning eyes worse y'ou d feel." and nosebteeds In another. people may Miles complained to the buildin s find themselves unusually tired. coughmarmgement. `dt first the5 thought we 1Dg and sneezing, with itchy skin and thraats. Contact lens w'earers may suffer were crazy;' he says. "To prove there severe eye iMtation. w'as nothing wrong one of the managers set up shop in our offices. You know how But here's the ruh: People every- long he tasted? One day." where occasionaily come down with The problem, Miles soon learned, was these ailments and eomplaincs. So when that construction crews working in an do you blame the building, instead of unoccupied area of the same ftour were hay fever, a cold or too many nights an using strong, solventbased adhesives to the town? One tipoft tt symptoms get seal holes in the ah' ducts. And. because worse as the workday wears on and then ofadefect,thebuilding'sventilattonsys~ Impraveatnightandonw'eekendswhen tem was pumping the toxic vapors into People are home, take a closer took at Phoenix's office suite, the building. Milesconvmcedthebuilding'sowner Since the late 1979s. indoorair spe- to cut holes in the glass of some of the clahsts from the National Institute for windows in Phoenix's offlces and install Occupational Safety and Health ~NIOSHI fans to pull in more fresh air. "But even have been called in to investigate more with that." he says, "there were dead than 1,000 instances of buildingrelated zunes where no matter what you did, tllness. [n more than 50 percent of the you couldn't stay there." Several em. cases, the institute has fingered mado- ployces quit rather than work in the 4uate ventllation, followed by chemical building, and after 18 months, Miles contamination and problenus traced to gave up and moved the company out. microbiological agents such as mold; The year was 1985, and in bacteria and fungi. door air pol. lutionwasn'tsomethingJtites-ormos[ 'EVerything contrihutes" says other employers or employees - had Richard Shaughnessy, a chemical engi- thought much about. But in moving to neerwhudirectstheindoonairresearch that brandnew 24stnry highrise, program at the University of Tulsa in PhoenixComputershadsetupshapina Oklahoma. `Copiers, ventilation sys. tems, the air brought in /rom outdoors, the number of people in a work space." e 199JHeolfhMogazfne Whenworkersaresneezing,poppmg aspirin, or walking around In a daae. it's then delivers it to the occupants Adm~ time for the builtlin doctors to examine throu h a ri f d t O g g se es o uc s nce . the causes. the air has evculated, return That's ducts channel some of it out- he Bu din s Lun T g g one way to think of the ventilation system, says James Cone, an occupational health physician at the University of Catifornu at San Francisco. The unit sucks in air from outside, runs it through a bank of fil. / ' t ters, warms it or cools it. and

, e Utt.LLS IIIj:~ the building you work in needs the checkup. '°' .°' side, In most buildings, the rest of the used air is mixed with fresh alr and recirculated. Whhm this labyrinth lurk ample opportumties for trouble. ^If vou go into the dark recesses of a ventila. tion system. you'd be shocked at w'hat you'd find," Shaughnessy says, Beyond the expected dirt and dust, typical detrttus in- cludes dead mice, Insects, particles of bmlding mate rials, mold, mildew and pesticides left by care~ less exterminators Io one 14assa. chusetts building, employ'ees were plagued by itchy red bumps they thought were inseet bites. Instead, consultant David Bearg found Ioase bits of fiberglass in. sulation blowing through the ducts. New filters ended the outbreak. Not all the trouble comes from the newer, tight buildings, by the way: Some older, unsealed buildings with dfrt clogged ventilation systems are among the worst offenders.In ehhercase. when the system works well and ts kept clean, workers breathe easy. Deadly dull work and ponderous lunches aren't the only reasons office workers nod off in the afternoon. Too lib tle air might be the problem. The Amer, ican Society of Heating, Hefrigeration. and Alr Conditioning Engineers, which establishes the ventilatton standards that influence local building codes, orig- inally set a figure of 15 cubic feet of fresh outdoor air per person per minute back in the 1930s , Then, in I975, prompted by the ener- gy crisis, the group decided that office workers could make do witk five - about what the average airplane passeo- ger gets. Though the recommenduion has since been boosted back up to 20, many buildings still don't circulate enough fresh atr. This means colds and other viruses spread more easily. When U S. Army re searchers compared ailments among two groups of 400,000 recruits, some of whom were housed in older, naturally ventilated qnarters and some of whom lived in newer, tightly sealed barracks, they found that the soldiers in the closed buildings got 50 percent more colds than those who lived in quarters where they could throw open a window. When a sealed office is crammed with more people than it was designed to hold, workers get less fresh alr thaa they shoWd. The standard of 20 cubic feet assumes that no more than seven people will occupy a t,00Psquarefoot area Stuff In more workers, and more air ie needed. Then there's plain bad destgn Some times a system sucks in and spews out air that's unfit for anyone to breathe. In buildings where workers have camplatned of headaches,fatigue,and nau- sea, investigators have traced the symp. toms to carbon monoxide potsoning. How might this happen to someone shaffling papers an Ihe 18th Ooar? Eass ly,1f the building's fresh air intakes open near a parking garage or a loading dock frequented by idling trucks, One sala tion is [o put up a sign by the loading dock, telling truckers to shut their em gines off immediately. Or, if the system See Page 10 Nursing a Building Back ta HeaZth Y W walkfntayourOfflceatst immedlatetystartmsaeeae The guy in the nertcubtcle cau'twearhiscontactlensea anymore. f ate in the afternoon the afk feela so stegnaK youcan barely keep your eyes open. EverybadY passesaround colds like potato ehfp at a pienfr.. You suspect you're working m a siek btdlding, but what ea.n you do ab.utIt! baawaa T..r TTwp.s Keep a log of yom' own and yourrn warkers' complaints-who gers what symptoma when atd w here. If worket sx take their matadtes to the doctor, keep records of thase visits, too. The American College of Occupational and Envlron- mental Medicine will provide names of physicians in your areawhospecialim in occupational healm. Call me conege'sed- ucationaldepartmentatYfOg1228dg50or the Association of Occupational and Envi- ronmental Cltnicsatl202134't497ga taaY 6ord fhe gdtdiq "Workersshoutd take responsibility for checking out their ownventilation systems,"says occupational health physi- clan ]ames Cane of San Francfsco. "You can learna IoL"BYrst, ebeckthe ceiling, walls and f loor to see whether each room has a soutceof air. Take a look at the air vents.Holdapieceoftissuepaperupm ~ each one to see whether atr u actually movingin or oul Grimy vents are a sfgn of inefficientor old fitters. Furniture or partitions placed over or in front of vents may be blocking the air flow. Check around copy, printing and shreddfngnLchtnestomakesnre they are neu a functloning exbawt vent H workers have to spend fong periods of time standing over such equipment,the machlnesshouidbefocatedfooncon- tinedspaces. Askthebuildingrnmnagerbowmany cublc feet per minute of fresh outdoorair Is circulating per person. If Is'a rder 211, lt's nat enough. Note when the ventila- ltOn system Is turned oif (ymt'li knaw when the white noise from the fans smps). If it cycles off for long periods dur. Ing the day, or goes off campleteiy while many people arestig warktngln the buiWing, contammanta may he building upintheair. Ask the buf ]ding maf n tena nce super- visor when the drain pans were Iast cle,aned, fs there aregufar mamtenance schedule? Are pesticides usednear the ventilstionsystem! ¢so, what precau- tians are being taken to keep these suh• stances out of the circulating airsupplyT Find out if any construction m reno- vatian projects are under way; if so. ask what's being done to flush harmfm va. pors from the butlding. gstg.st MHa. Once you've targetedaoy hazards, you'll have to convincesomeooe to do something, starting with your etbployer. If yaur efforts meet with resistance, you might get hold of the Environmental Pro, tectian Agency's detailed guide,'Build- ing Air Quality: A Guide for Building Owners and Facility Managera"It's avail, able for $24 by writing to New Orden, Su- perlntendent of Documeots, P,O. Box 371gtiS,Pfttsburgh,PAt575i17g6/.Qtefer marderproceaqngcode et03.1 You can al- so orderby tax:1202/5122258. The pubti. catianezplainshow a building manager can clean up and prevent indoorair pu4 lutlon and when expert help might be needed. It also reminds managers that their Indifference can result in disgrun tied workers, lowered producnvity, baa publicity and hefty lawsuits. Cdl l. NM gxprfs TheNatieoal Institute for Occupation- al Safety and Health's Hazard Evaluanon andTechnical Assistance Branch imesti- gatessick building outbreaks but has the tlmeand staff for only the most serious ca.xs. Hawever, a telephone hot line- ag 1800/35NIOSH-provides basic in ftrntationand referrals tostate and local healthdepartments. As sick building problems become more visible, private consultants are sprlagingup like algae m a dram pan. The EPA wlll publish a It.stof such firms within a few months. Check wtth the Pub- lic Information Center, Environmental ProtectionAgency, Washington. D.C.. 2A4G0,1282)EB0.2118n,orcallthe.firQualityOfficeatiD72i2A39030.ASitfortheSur vey of Indoor Air Quality Diagnostic and MitlgatlonFirms. Also check the local yellow pages un der Indaor AirorIndustrial HygieneCon sultants.Whoevercontractsforthescseo vittsshould ask ahout cases the company has handled before.If possible check referenees;suchfhxnsaren'tregulated.and some have little experience. -K.G.