Practice
Services
Sick Building Syndromes
Workbook #08 | HUMAN FACTORS: SUSTAINABILITY AND HABITABILITY
Welcome to the planet, welcome to existence
Everyone's here. (Switchfoot - Dare you to move)
People are strange. (The Doors)
Yes they are. (Demis)
Australia has shown steady progress in terms of habitability indicators such as health, education, employment and national income, among others (ABS 1990 – 2000). However, the opposite holds true vis-à-vis sustainability indicators such as biodiversity, land degradation, greenhouse gas emission and land clearance, among others. Is there a connection between improvement in social environments (in terms of accepted standards) and a corresponding misuse of the “external” environment? It does seem suspicious, though one could also argue that in developing countries like India consumption standards and other habitability indicators are relatively low when compared to developed nations like the U.S., but we make up for it through sheer weight of numbers. So more developed countries consume more per person (read in the paper a few days back that the average U.S. citizen uses something like 40 squares of toilet paper a day - !) and developing nations consume in bulk, What all of this means is that we produce a lot of unnecessary garbage (solid liquid gas you name it we got it) and dump it into the external environment. More on that later: what about our internal environment?
Take your typical office building where maybe you’re lucky enough to hold a 9 to 6 job – comfortably locked off from the harsh and polluted outside for 40 hours a week, breathing canned sterile air and not harbouring cynical (yet optimistic) thoughts about humankind, unlike a certain person who shall remain Unnamed. Safe right? Nothing wrong here.
Consider:
In other words your workplace may be the gift that just keeps on giving. Not good.
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946. The Definition has not been amended since 1948.
SBS and BRI: Healthy internal environments?
SBS
"Sick building syndrome" (SBS) describes situations in which building occupants experience acute health and comfort effects that appear to be linked to time spent in a building, but no specific illness or cause can be identified.
Indicators include symptoms associated with discomfort (such as headache, ENT irritation, dry cough, dizziness, nausea, lack of concentration and fatigue) that abate or disappear on (Elvis) leaving the building.
Causes may include
inadequate ventilation: building ventilation standards were reduced during the 1970s energy crisis from 15 cfm (cubic feet per minute) to 5 cfm, which was found to be inadequate to maintain health and comfort of the users. ASHRAE recently raised it to a minimum of 15cfm of outdoor air, but preferably 20 cfm in office spaces. This is based on satisfying 80% of the occupants, presumably the remaining 20% being statistical freaks. What was it we learnt in mathematics about ignoring negligible values in equations because they somehow didn’t matter? Well there’s a 20% chance you’re a negligible value.
chemical contaminants from indoor sources: for example, adhesives, carpeting, upholstery, manufactured wood products, copy machines, pesticides, and cleaning agents may emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including formaldehyde.
chemical contaminants from outdoor sources: for example, pollutants from motor vehicle exhausts; plumbing vents, and building exhausts entering through poorly located air intake vents, windows, and other openings.
biological contaminants: for example bacteria, molds, pollen, and viruses that may breed in stagnant water that has accumulated in ducts, humidifiers and drain pans, or where water has collected on ceiling tiles, carpeting, or insulation. One indoor bacterium, Legionella, causes Legionnaire's Disease and Pontiac Fever.
Dust mites
BRI
"Building related illness" (BRI) describes situations when symptoms of diagnosable illness are identified and can be attributed directly to airborne building contaminants.
Indicators include symptoms that can be clinically defined and persist after the person leaves the building, such as cough, chest tightness, fever, chills, and muscle aches
What you can (or shouldn’t) do (from www.epa.gov)
‘"Combining nature with technology can increase the effectiveness of plants in removing air pollutants," he said. "A living air cleaner is created by combining activated carbon and a fan with a potted plant. The roots of the plant grow right in the carbon and slowly degrade the chemicals absorbed there," Wolverton explains.’ www.zone10.com
Why open windows? Psychologically, if not physically, it makes a big difference if you know you can control your environment. Even if the quality of natural ventilation and air-conditioned ventilation are more or less the same, people find the former healthier. And not just ventilation – in my journal entry on light I mentioned how office-goers who are given the ability to control the amount and colour of light in their space were much happier. Naturally – one, you choose the environmental state you’re most comfortable with rather than someone else having the honour (standardization works with machines, production and the whole Industrial Revolution thing, but years of social brainwashing later we humans still don’t like it – I don’t at any rate), and two, you’re in control. A lot of people don’t like flying in airlines because while it’s statistically safer than driving a car, when you’re in a car you at least have the illusion of control. If – touchwood – anything goes wrong on board a flight, your life depends on a disembodied voice that could be anyone or anything, even a ghost in the flying machine. I enjoy flying, but I look forward to if and when I learn flying on my own. Anyway, I’ve gotten sidetracked here. Back to the issue of opening Windows. The nights here in Sydney are cold (at least they were) so I sleep with the windows closed, but first thing in the morning I open them and let in some good old sunshine and fresh air. And considering the age and condition of the carpet in the apartment I’m renting, I hope those UV rays wreak havoc among any dust mites that I may be living with. There was a close up picture of one in the lecture, and I Did Not Like It. Almost as bad as cockroaches.
Coming back to the whole issue of control and belief, there was something in the lecture about “learned helplessness”, how we believe that things are out of our hands so we shouldn’t bother trying. I came across an article by Ken McLeod on the Web (www.unfetteredmind.com) that may not be very “scientific” (anything mentioning unfathomables like Buddha and Soul and God is automatically classified as such) but is worth reading anyhow. Some selected passages:
"But what will my family think? What about my friends? They won't understand," she said.
"Yes, there are consequences. You have to make a choice. Do you continue to live the life defined for you by others or do you act on what you know to be true?" …
… whenever the child says, "Hold on, there's something wrong here," the power of the family system comes into play: "What? You don't love your mother! Shame on you." "You can't do that, you might get hurt." Similar conditioning mechanisms operate in most systems. The system uses shame and the withdrawal of attention to instill a fear of survival. Simultaneously, the system presents the view that power resides in the system, not the individual. The combination creates a dependence on the system for survival. Gradually, the system is internalized and the person identifies with it -- he sees himself the way the system sees him. His sense of who he is defined by the system. (We see this tendency very clearly in the professions -- "I'm a doctor, so I do x, y and z" or "I'm an attorney, so I do x, y and z.")
The four separations that Sakya Pandita received from Manjushri point the way.
If you are attached to this life, you are not a spiritual person.
"This life" means the life defined by society and culture -- success and failure in the conventional sense. The primary practice for separating from "this life" is meditation on death and impermanence. When we know clearly we are going to die, we focus on what is truly important to us, not what we have been told is important.
If you are attached to the cycle of existence, you will not be free.
The cycle of existence (samsara) is the technical term for the whole collection of habituated patterns that confine us. As long as we are attached to any of those habituated patterns, we will never experience freedom. The primary practice for separating from such patterns is meditation on suffering and how it arises.
If you are attached to your own welfare, you are not an awakening being.
When our lives are based on protecting and defending our self-identity, we can never wake up to the totality of awareness and experience. An awakening being (bodhisattva) is one who is determined to wake up. So we have to separate from being concerned solely with our own welfare. The primary practice is taking and sending. It embodies the four immeasurables (loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity).
If you are attached to a position, you can't see things as they are.
Finally, a more succinct formulation comes from the Korean master Seung Sa Nihm:
First kill the Buddha.
Then kill your parents.
Then kill your teacher.
In other words, we remove any idea that there is an ideal such as enlightenment or Buddha that is going to save us. Then we remove all the habituations that we acquired from our family. Finally, we remove even the habituations we acquire as a student. Then we can stand in awareness and serve what is true.
And we don’t take the “formulation” literally.
All right, so perhaps your office isn’t the healthiest place to be. Shall we step outside instead?
Gas exchange by the human lungs (surface area equivalent to a tennis court) = 10,000 litres a day
Composition of air today = fine suspended particulates (PM10 and smaller), lead (Pb), sulphur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3), volatile organic compounds (VOC), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO) (associated with global warming). Oh yes, and oxygen (02), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N2), water vapour and inert gases.
= bad news. For example photochemical smog, composed mainly of nitrous oxides and VOCs, has become part of the “natural” cycle. It increases in the day over cities when traffic is heaviest with people going to work, is transported by the wind over larger areas or simply hangs, to use a cliché, like a pall, especially if weather conditions are just right (such as temperature inversions). Sometimes it’s a bit scary to think just how much we affect the environment (and usually not for the better) and, worse, how blissfully unaware we are.
People say that someone once invented a cheap alternative energy source that was hushed up by the energy companies. Some even say there was a car that didn’t need fossil fuels to run on, didn’t pollute, and was hushed up by the petrol and automobile companies because there were bigger bucks to be made selling gas-guzzling SUVs. Others talk about how railway lines were bought up by vested interests and decommissioned so more people would spend more money on more cars.
Of course all these people are stark raving mad. Aren’t they?
So in the meanwhile we’re stuck into a rut where we take resources in and spew out garbage. We’ve done it on Mt. Everest and we’ve done it on the moon. We’ve even got debris in orbit around our planet!
And while we’re on pollution, there’s noise as well. Noise is unwanted sound, which is a very subjective way of looking at it because it depends on different people in different situations. In a library a conversation held at a level a shade above sotto voce would attract frowns and dark mutterings, whereas at a political rally you expect to hear a lot of talk anyway, which presumably you wanted to hear so it isn’t noise. One man’s music would be another’s noise as well. Heavy metal or Beethoven? Both have their own rhythms and melodies that appeal – it’s when the notes get out of sync that we get irritated. Pet peeves of mine include car alarms (110db) wailing in the night, and rich kids driving around the neighbourhood in Dad’s car stereos blaring bass. The vibrating earth heralds their passage, which of course is the whole point. These are two things in India I definitely do not miss.
Noise can also be identified more objectively by its physical properties – how loud it is measured in decibels. In this case again there is the subjectivity factor, but the physical effects are observable. Noise is unhealthy. Whether you want it or not is irrelevant – it’s affecting you physically. Less productivity, hearing loss, irritation and stress, sleep loss and disturbed REM sleep are just some of the effects of noise. Sounds at 70db and above cause hearing loss and stress, and yet we experience sounds (noise) in our daily lives well above that on a regular basis. Highway traffic, aircraft taking off, mothers-in-law…
Ways of reducing noises or protecting the spaces we live in from them include structural details like multiple skin construction, raised floors, solid internal walls, acoustic insulation and internal reverberation times – materials.
Landscaping details include earth berms, neighbourhood-integrated parks, ‘urban forests’, buffers on freeways and so on. Though I seem to recall Professor Paul Alan Johnson mentioning during our design studio that trees as sound buffers are a myth.
In March 2000, the Daily Telegraph reported that Sydenham, near Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport, experiences some of Australia’s worst noise pollution. Recently, the noise from a Boeing 747 flying over the suburb was recorded at 106 decibels (dB), the equivalent of standing in front of a loud rock band. Aircraft noise in Sydney is a major environmental concern, particularly since the opening of the third runway at Kingsford Smith. To cope with the increased noise levels, soundproofing costing several millions of dollars has been installed in thousands of homes near the airport.
Three approaches to solving the problem of airport noise
The first leg is to ensure that aircraft emit the lowest possible noise levels, compatible with airline safety. The second leg is to impose controls on airport operations, such as restricting the number of arrivals and departures, imposing night curfews, and minimizing flight paths over populated areas. The third leg is to control urban development near existing airports and the site of future airports.
www.science.org.au
The first 90 seconds of random songs from my music collection (from L tom M and latest) – Noise or music?
Outro: Lyrics of “Dare you to move” by Switchfoot (www.lyricsondemand.com)
Welcome to the planet, welcome to existence
Everyone's here, everyone's watching you now
Everybody waits for you now, what happens next?
I dare you to move, I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move, Like today never happened
Today never happened before
Welcome to the fallout, welcome to resistance
The tension is here, between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be
Maybe redemption has stories to tell, maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself? Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?
Salvation is here
Barker, R. (1968). Ecological Psychology. Stanford University Press.
Economou, Jones, Lee, Smith and Yip, Sick Building Syndrome on the University of Toronto St. George Campus
Hedge, A., Addressing the psychological aspects of indoor air quality
NASA. Clean Air Study.
www.who.org, www.epa.gov