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Concept
Sick building syndrome
Summary
Sick building syndrome (SBS) is a condition in which people develop symptoms of illness or become infected with chronic disease from the building in which they work or reside.
The main identifying observation is an increased incidence of complaints of symptoms such as headache, eye, nose, and throat irritation, fatigue, dizziness, and nausea. In fact the 1989 Oxford English Dictionary defines SBS in that way. The World Health Organization created a 484-page tome on indoor air quality back in 1984 when SBS was attributed only to non-organic causes, and suggested that the book might form a basis for legislation or litigation.
The outbreaks may or may not be a direct result of inadequate cleaning or inappropriate cleaning methods. SBS has also been used to describe staff concerns in post-war buildings with misplanned building aerodynamics, defects in the construction materials or assembly process and-or inadequate maintenance. Certain symptoms tend to increase in severity with the time people spend in the building; often improving over time or even disappearing when people are away from the building. SBS is also used interchangeably with "building-related symptoms", which orients the name of the condition around patients' symptoms rather than a "sick" building.
Attempts have been made to connect sick building syndrome to various causes, such as contaminants produced by outgassing of some types of building materials, volatile organic compounds (VOC), improper exhaust ventilation of ozone (byproduct of some office machinery), light industrial chemicals used within, or lack of adequate fresh-air intake/air filtration (see minimum efficiency reporting value). Sick building syndrome has also been attributed to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. However, there have been inconsistent findings on whether air conditioning systems result in SBS or not.
Human exposure to aerosols has been documented to give rise to a variety of adverse health effects.
Official source
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