Sick building syndrome: are we doing enough?

Abstract

Health and well-being are vitally important aspects of people centric building design and are the roots of productivity. Sick building syndrome (SBS) is a collection of factors that can negatively affect physical health in several ways. Besides physical health is also related to psychological well-being because the human body is one interactive biological system. This paper focuses on reviewing the current state of knowledge on building sickness syndrome which has been prevalent as a building illness since the 1970s especially in offices and schools. While the concepts of intelligent, smart and sustainable buildings have gained considerable attention during recent decades, there is now increasing attention being given to designing healthy buildings. This study provides a review about SBS symptoms. Several negative effects of SBS are identified and potential solutions are advocated. Finally, the study stresses the role of built environment and concludes that ongoing research towards tackling SBS and developing healthy indoor environments should not be limited to a single formula as any health-related building design approach is dependent on several interacting factors. ARTICLE HISTORY

Application of Life Cycle Energy Assessment in Residential Buildings: A Critical Review of Recent Trends

“…The review considered publication materials from various academic databases, namely Scopus, Google Scholar, and Web of Science. The application of multiple search engines to investigate the body of literature covers the weaknesses of one source by using the strength of others [25,26]. The approach to conducting the review consists of three main steps.…”

Connections and Divergence between Public Health and Built Environment—A Scoping Review

“…Inadequate indoor lighting affects both vision and the photobiological needs of synchronizing circadian rhythm, which impacts sleep and depression [69]. Well-designed lighting is one of the most important design elements to support an occupant's ability to perform daily tasks and decrease the level of disability associated with these impairments [68].…”

Knowledge Graphs for Analyzing Thermal Comfort: A Proposal

“…temperature or air quality [9]) of a specific space by its occupants. TC is studied because it has been shown that it favors not only the comfort, but also the wellness, the health, the productivity and the performance of the occupants of a space [13,19]. So, the research in this domain is aimed to determine parameters and variables to help upgrading the conditions of habitability and quality of specific spaces [19].…”

“…Concerning the space itself and its external environment, variables such as radial temperature and relative humidity are of importance, while regarding the occupants, variables of interest are for instance the body mass index and the level of isolation of thermal clothing [11,17,20]. Based on this discussion, the approaches for the study of Thermal Comfort are two [10,13,17,18]: Thermal Comfort involves then the analysis of a highly complex context, that can be easily influenced by a large number of aspects [10,17,19]. However, in spite of being a highly studied topic, it is commonly tackled with a traditional perspective.…”