Sick Building Syndrome: The Phenomenon and Its Air-Handling Etiology

摘要

This thesis includes an empirical part and a theoretical part. The empirical partconsists of three chapters. Chapter 2 presents a blinded, four-period crossover study to assess the role of air recirculation as a determinant of the nonspecific symptoms of the eyes, respiratory tract, skin, and central nervous system in office workers, often termed the sick building syndrome. Chapters 3 and 4 present the results of a cross-sectional study of workers in randomly selected office buildings from the Helsinki metropolitan area. The occurrence of the nonspecific symptoms are studied in relation to the type of ventilation (Chapter 3) and ventilation rate (Chapter 4). The theoretical part (Chapter 5) examines critically the concepts associated with the phenomenon sick building syndrome, and proposes the Office Environment Model for understanding physical, psychological, and social determinants of health in the office environment.