Out with the Bad Air… - sick buildings

HR Magazine, Oct, 2000 by Robert J. Grossman

At this moment, a threat that you can't see and have trouble identifying could literally be sucking the life out of your business--and your employees.

The year was 1989, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), guardian of environmental health and safety, was making headlines it would have preferred to avoid. In increasing numbers, workers at its Washington, D.C., headquarters were complaining that something in the building was making them sick. As commentators chortled over the EPA's predicament, the agency approached the problem methodically, scientifically and dispassionately--and unfortunately, as EPA administrators now admit, disastrously.

"We were interested in understanding the statistics before taking action," recalls Steve Page, director of EPA's Office of Radiation and Indoor Air. "We sent people to doctors and called in scientists; they told us they couldn't link the problems to the building. When we passed along the inconclusive findings five weeks later, it was devastating to the people who knew that they weren't OK."

More testing, sleuthing and time went by without pinpointing the cause. The end result was a mass epidemic of symptoms, a debilitating dip in morale and productivity and, finally, an evacuation of the building. EPA still doesn't know why some people became ill and others didn't. But from an HR perspective, it really doesn't matter.

"The first thing we should have shown is concern for our employees," Page says. "Instead of studying it to death, we should have used common sense and immediately evacuated the area. Today, I would assume that anyone complaining is sincere. I would presume they're right, act on the concern quickly and communicate the steps I'm taking. When their health is on the line, people want to be updated. They want to know if the coast is clear."

A Malaise of Huge Proportions

The EPA experience is only the tip of the iceberg. Since the 1970s when the OPEC oil embargo spurred construction of energy efficient buildings, literally millions of workers have blamed office environments for their discomfort and illness. Thousands of others are suffering from life-threatening illnesses and diseases that they attribute to their buildings.

If you don't currently have any problems at your location, consider yourself lucky--at least for the moment. Odds are that a building malady is in the air; you're only in remission.

We spend 90 percent of our time indoors, much of that at work; according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the EPA, many of us are breathing air that's making us sick or uncomfortable. Both agencies rank indoor air quality (IAQ) among the most serious environmental problems in the United States.

OSHA estimates that about 1.34 million U.S. office buildings have problems with air quality. Every day, more than 20 million American workers face an unnecessary health threat because of indoor air pollution in the workplace. The agency links thousands of heart disease deaths, hundreds of lung cancer deaths, and many cases of respiratory disease, Legionnaire's disease, asthma and other ailments to IAQ.

EPA estimates that between 20 percent and 35 percent of all workers in modern mechanically ventilated buildings may experience air-quality discomfort or illness. Further, the agency agrees with an estimate from the World Health Organization that up to 30 percent of all new and remodeled buildings worldwide have excessive air-quality problems that can lead to sick building syndrome or building-related illness.

Yet, in spite of these disturbing figures, the government and private sector have offered little guidance to employers. (See "A Dearth of Guidance" on page 39.)

Sick Building Syndrome and Building Related Illness

Individuals with sick building syndrome (SBS) experience acute health and comfort problems that seem to be linked to being in a building, but the cause cannot be pinpointed. By comparison, building-related illness (BRI) involves symptoms that can be clinically diagnosed and linked directly to the source.

Both conditions are attributed to pollutants and bad ventilation or circulation that allow airborne chemical contaminants, mold, fungi and bacteria to linger and be inhaled by occupants.

With BRI, you can clearly detect a biological contaminant, a fungus, a bacteria or workers reacting to a toxic gas or vapor. People develop clinically demonstrable illnesses, such as Legionnaires' disease or radon poisoning. When they leave the building, they don't get better.

In contrast, SBS is defined by the symptoms of the occupants rather than by success at linking their complaints to specific pathogenic or toxic compounds. Large percentages of people--more than 80 percent in some buildings-experience irritation and annoyance. Symptoms include headaches, unusual lethargy, eye irritation, nose and throat irritation, tightness in the chest, nausea, wheezing, lapses of memory and skin irritation.

"It's progressive throughout the day, and we don't know what agent in the air is causing it," says Alan Hedges, a professor at the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University's College of Human Ecology in Ithaca, N.Y. "That's why we talk about the interaction of agents and multiple chemical sensitivity. We don't know why these people are reacting the way they do."