A bit numb at work?

Poor ventilation may have something to do with it.

A new study by Harvard scientists has shown that the quality of the air in an office can have a significant impact on employees' cognitive abilities, including to concentrate.

"There is a lot of research on exposure to air pollution outdoors, but we spend 90% of our time indoors," noted Jose Guillermo Cedeno Laurent, lead author of the study published Thursday. in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters.

He and his colleagues followed 302 office workers in six countries (China, India, Mexico, Thailand, United States and United Kingdom) over a period of one year.

Response time and accuracy of responses impacted

The experiment ended in March 2020 with the confinements linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.

All participants were between 18 and 65 years old, worked at least three days in an office, where they had their own permanent position.

A sensor has been placed there to measure in real time the concentrations of fine particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), as well as carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity.

Participants performed cognitive tests at certain pre-programmed times, or when PM2.5 or CO2 levels fell below or exceeded certain thresholds.

One test asked employees to correctly identify the color used to write a word denoting a different color (eg the word "red" written in green), and the other consisted of simple addition and subtraction.

Typically, outdoors, CO2 concentrations hover around 400 ppm (parts per million), and 1,000 ppm is often considered a maximum indoors. Regarding the levels of PM2.5, they were for example 13.8 micrograms per cubic meter in Washington on Thursday, against 42 in New Delhi, according to the IQAir website. Study results showed that an increase in PM2.5 of 10 micrograms per cubic meter led to a 1% reduction in response time to both tests, and more than 1% in response accuracy. .

For CO2, an increase of 500 ppm (a level of variation not being unusual) led to a 1% drop in response time, and 2% in accuracy, for both tests.

If previous studies have shown that prolonged exposure to fine particles can affect the nervous system and cause neurodegenerative diseases, this work is the first to show a short-term effect, according to the researcher.

The solution ?

“Open a window”, or install a suitable filtration system if the outside air is polluted.

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