Health & Fitness: Got That Stuffy, Run-Down Feeling?

Office work, whether it takes place in the executive suite or the typing pool, has never been regarded as particularly hazardous. After all, there is no heavy lifting and no brutal machinery. But it may not be particularly healthy either. More and more employees are complaining that they are beset during deskbound hours by a panoply of miseries, from stuffy heads and watery eyes to nosebleeds, headaches and that just-plain-lousy feeling. Doctors and employers have long tended to dismiss such distress as hypochondria, but no longer. Increasingly, the grousing is considered to signal a real problem: indoor air pollution, or, as it is widely known, sick-building syndrome. Says Eileen Claussen, an official of the Environmental Protection Agency: “Pollutants in the indoor environment can cause a serious health risk.”

The EPA should know. Last week 70 aggrieved workers picketed the agency’s Washington headquarters, charging that the air inside was so contaminated that it caused burning eyes, fatigue, dizziness, and even made breathing difficult. Despite bright, well-scrubbed appearances, many of today’s workplaces are aswirl with noxious pollutants. An estimated one-fifth to one-third of U.S. buildings are considered “sick”: they contain areas in which more than 20% of employees suffer acute discomfort that is often eased when they leave the premises. “SBS sneaks up on you,” says Research Scientist Michael McCawley of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Predicts McCawley: “Office air quality will be one of the big problems of the 1990s.”

Most often the problem is poor ventilation. Sometimes the difficulty stems from design flaws. In some buildings, for example, air-intake ducts are built directly over loading docks; exhaust fumes from idling trucks are drawn in and circulated through work areas. During the energy crunch of the 1970s, conservation measures such as installing sealed windows, closing air-intake ducts and overinsulating roofs only made matters worse. As a result, most — and at times all — of the air in many office buildings is recirculated. “Without adequate dilution by fresh air, pollution levels build up,” explains Robert Phalen, an environmental specialist at the University of California in Irvine. “It’s like being in a submarine. No matter how good the air filter is, there’s always going to be residual pollution.”

There are also plenty of hazardous vapors. Says Chemist Gray Robertson, whose company in Fairfax, Va., has surveyed nearly 250 structures for foul indoor air: “The public tends to mistake tobacco smoke — the only visible indoor contaminant — for all pollution.” Less readily detected are irritating fumes from copier-machine liquids, carbonless paper, paint, rugs, draperies, wall paneling and cleaning solvents. Many contain formaldehyde, which can cause nausea, rashes and menstrual irregularities. Ventilators also spew forth illness-causing bacteria and mold; such organisms find fertile breeding ground in air-conditioning and heating systems that are often turned off at night and on weekends to save energy.

Air quality can actually be worse indoors than outdoors. Says EPA’s Claussen: “The air in some office buildings is 100 times as polluted as the air outside.” Although Americans spend an estimated 90% of their lives indoors, no specific federal regulations have been adopted for control of air in offices. The cost of SBS is steep: medical bills and absenteeism run into hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Potentially damaging lawsuits are on the rise. Jack K. Buckley, 62, who claimed that formaldehyde fumes in a new office building in Goleta, Calif., caused him to lose consciousness and suffer permanent brain injury, last year received an out-of-court settlement of close to $600,000.

The threat of SBS has spawned a new field called building diagnostics. Teams of specialists — architects, biologists, health and behavioral scientists — regularly turn up a bewildering array of problems in tainted office environments. “So many things can come together and cause the syndrome,” says John Zeisel, president of a consulting firm in Boston. “It is not easy to assign blame specifically.” Investigators quiz workers about air quality, furniture, space layout, lighting and acoustics; in addition, they collect and analyze air samples, inspect hidden areas with fiber-optic instruments and crawl through ventilation systems looking for mold and pools of stagnant water. “It’s Sherlock Holmes, for sure,” says Microbiologist Harriet Burge of the University of Michigan. “We’ve been called ‘microbial ghostbusters.’ “

Such investigations sometimes yield easy remedies like installing hooded exhaust vents over copier machines or reconfiguring office partitions to permit the free flow of air. At a state agency in Michigan, removing plastic taped over fresh-air intake ducts corrected a nagging problem: workers had been falling asleep at their desks. Cleaning air ducts or replacing air filters is a common and relatively simple solution. %

Many troubled buildings, however, seem to defy simple, inexpensive fixes. Take the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at the University of Florida in Gainesville, a spanking modern lab-and-office complex that was completed ten years ago. By 1986, more than half the 600 workers in the building were complaining of everything from headaches and rashes to a metallic taste in their mouths and contact lenses that changed color. A series of consultants pored over the building for two years. Their recommendation: overhaul the air- ventilation system to prevent fungi in the horse barn from circulating throughout the complex. Projected cost of curing the sick building: around $6 million, more than half the cost of its original construction. That is enough to give anyone a headache.