What is Sick Building Syndrome? A Definition
Thursday, 25th February 2022
After the pandemic hit, the slightest cough has had many of us reaching for a COVID test. But there are other conditions that can make us ill, coronaviruses besides. If you or your staff have symptoms that worsen during or after being in a particular building, it might be something called sick building syndrome (SBS).
The variety of symptoms of SBS can make the condition difficult to diagnose. It’s also often mistaken for other illnesses, such as common colds and flu.
What sets SBS apart, however, is that its symptoms tend to improve after you’ve spent some time away from the building concerned, and return when you re-enter it. Sometimes just a particular room or floor is affected, and sometimes the whole building.
Let’s find out a bit more about SBS, including its symptoms, causes and treatment.
Sick building syndrome: a definition
Sick building syndrome refers to a number of physical symptoms experienced by people who live or work in a specific building. These symptoms can include neurological, respiratory and skin disorders, among others.
In working environments, SBS is a serious occupational hazard. It can dramatically decrease how productive people are at work, and can increase their chances of being absent. Over the long term, this can have a material impact on the success of your business.
In fact, the Centre for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reported that, in 2009, environmental quality-related health issues were costing businesses in the United States between $20 and $70 billion annually.
How do you know if you have sick building syndrome?
SBS can feel different to different people. Some people might only experience one or two of the symptoms below, others many more, and some none at all. It’s also possible that your employees or tenants will only start to feel sick after they’ve left the building, which can make identifying the cause of their symptoms even harder.
Some common SBS symptoms include:
Headaches
Dizziness
Difficulty concentrating
Fatigue
Irritability
Eye, nose or throat irritation
Dry cough
Difficulty breathing
Tightness in the chest
Dry or itching skin
Nausea
Body aches
Fever
Chills
If someone is asthmatic, they might find that they have asthma attacks more regularly. People who suffer from allergies are also likely to experience regular allergic reactions.
What are some of the causes of sick building syndrome?
The list of potential causes of SBS is almost as long as its list of symptoms. And unless you know that your building is non-compliant in one particular area, it can sometimes be difficult to identify which issue is responsible for making your employees or tenants sick.
The design, operation and maintenance of buildings can all affect the incidence of SBS, and should all be closely monitored in order to avoid SBS.
Some of the most common culprits of SBS include:
Poor indoor air quality
Poor ventilation systems and indoor air quality are often cited as causes of SBS. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems that aren’t working properly or aren’t adequately maintained can contribute to polluted indoor air, which can cause a range of respiratory illnesses.
Chemical contaminants
Outdoor and indoor chemical contaminants can both have a significant effect on the well-being of your building’s occupants.
Pollutants such as radon, dust, formaldehyde and asbestos often enter the building through ventilation systems that are poorly located or badly maintained.
Indoor pollutants, on the other hand, are often inadvertently installed, with damaging consequences. Some volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are toxic to humans, for example, and yet they are regularly used in adhesives, and in upholstery, carpeting, cleaning products and artificial wood products.
Biological contaminants
Bacteria, mould, pollen, fungal spores and viruses can all make people sick, and inadequate facilities can increase the risk of these contaminants spreading.
Stagnant water in pipes can cause bacteria such as legionella and pseudomona aeruginosa to grow. Legionella causes Legionnaires' disease, which is a severe form of pneumonia, and pseudomonas aeruginosa can cause infections in the blood and lungs. The UK Health and Safety Executive has a legionella monitoring framework that buildings are expected to comply with.
There are many other contributing causes, including poor lighting and heating, electromagnetic radiation from badly grounded electronic devices, and psychological factors, such as stress and poor working relationships. Each issue can cause different, interrelated symptoms, including skin and eye disorders, headaches, fatigue and, in the case of electromagnetic radiation, even cancer.
While these problems can sound complex and overwhelming, there are solutions out there to help you. At Infogrid, our smart building systems use internet of things (IoT) sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) processes to create efficient, sustainable and SBS-free buildings.
If you’re concerned that your building might be causing SBS in your building’s occupants, take a look at some of the solutions we offer below. You might also want to read up on a few of our relevant case studies:
How can you stop sick building syndrome?
The best way to deal with SBS is to address it at source. This means taking concerted measures to spot the issues that exist (bearing in mind that there might be more than one), and implementing new steps to protect the health of your occupants as quickly as you can.
Because identifying the causes can be difficult, it’s a good idea to adopt a multi-pronged solution that is automated, easy to install and maintain, and remotely controlled.
Infogrid’s range of smart technologies are ideally suited to help, particularly our Healthy Building System. This solution is all about looking at buildings holistically, including air quality, occupancy, smart cleaning, water safety and occupant satisfaction, in an effort to make sure that they’re safe and healthy working environments.
Treating sick building syndrome at source
Let’s go back to the three culprits we identified above and tackle them one at a time:
Improving indoor air quality
Don’t allow polluted air to make your people ill. With our air quality monitoring system, you can keep a watchful eye on your building’s levels of CO2, VOCs, radon, humidity, light levels and air pressure. It’s designed to maintain these levels and to alert you to problems without using unnecessary energy or incurring heavy costs.
Combatting chemical contaminants. Our smart cleaning service is designed to help you combat certain pollutants and protect from the risk of COVID-19 transmission (and/or other viruses). Improving your air quality through the process above will also help.
Dealing with biological contaminants
Manually managing your pipes is both time-consuming and wasteful. Our pipe monitoring solution involves installing smart sensors that monitor the risk of contaminants like legionella or pseudomona aeruginosa.
Recently, we helped one of our clients to install a solution that not only reduced the time spent on legionella reporting by 81%, but also only took an hour to install across the whole building.
If your people are unwell, unproductive or unable to come to work, your building and your business are likely to suffer too. But SBS is preventable, and it’s possible to create a healthy working environment that is both successful and sustainable.
Speak to us today about how to make SBS a thing of the past.