Green offices make employees smarter
People who work in well-ventilated offices with below-average levels of indoor pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO2) have are better in responding to a crisis and developing strategy than those who work in regular offices.
Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, SUNY Upstate Medical University, and Syracuse University looked at people’s experiences in “green” vs. “non-green” buildings.
The findings suggest that the indoor environments in which many people work daily could be adversely affecting cognitive function–and that, conversely, improved air quality could greatly increase the cognitive function performance of workers.
For six days in November 2014, while the participants performed their normal work, the researchers exposed them to various simulated building conditions. At the end of each day, they conducted cognitive testing on the participants.
They found that cognitive performance scores for the participants who worked in the green environments were, on average, double those of participants who worked in conventional environments.
In addition, when researchers looked at the effect of CO2–not normally thought of as a direct indoor pollutant–they found that, for seven of the nine cognitive functions tested, average scores decreased as CO2 levels increased to levels commonly observed in many indoor environments.
According to Usha Satish, professor, Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, “The major significance of this finding lies in the fact that these are the critical decision making parameters that are linked to optimal and productive functioning. Losing components of these skills impacts how people handle their day to day lives.”
