title: Effects of ventilation rate per person and per floor area on perceived air quality, sick building syndrome symptoms, and decision-making.
abstract: Ventilation rates (VRs) in buildings must adequately control indoor levels of pollutants; however, VRs are constrained by the energy costs. Experiments in a simulated office assessed the effects of VR per occupant on perceived air quality (PAQ), Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) symptoms, and decision-making performance. A parallel set of experiments assessed the effects of VR per unit floor area on the same outcomes. Sixteen blinded healthy young adult subjects participated in each study. Each exposure lasted four hours and each subject experienced two conditions in a within-subject study design. The order of presentation of test conditions, day of testing, and gender were balanced. Temperature, relative humidity, VRs, and concentrations of pollutants were monitored. Online surveys assessed PAQ and SBS symptoms and a validated computer-based tool measured decision-making performance. Neither changing the VR per person nor changing the VR per floor area, had consistent statistically significant effects on PAQ or SBS symptoms. However, reductions in either occupant-based VR or floor-area-based VR had a significant and independent negative impact on most decision-making measures. These results indicate that the changes in VR employed in the study influence performance of healthy young adults even when PAQ and SBS symptoms are unaffected.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study results indicate the importance of avoiding low VRs per person and low VRs per floor area to minimize decrements in cognitive performance.
authors.affiliation: Indoor Environment Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Maddalena
authors.affiliation: Indoor Environment Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: M J
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5379-1633
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Mendell
authors.affiliation: Indoor Environment Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.|School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Eliseeva
authors.affiliation: Indoor Environment Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: W R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.affiliation: Indoor Environment Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: D P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Sullivan
authors.affiliation: Indoor Environment Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Russell
authors.affiliation: Upstate Medical University, State University of New York, Syracuse, NY, USA.
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Satish
authors.affiliation: Indoor Environment Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: W J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Fisk
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016902:Air Pollution, Indoor; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018877:Sick Building Syndrome / Q000517:prevention & control*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014691:Ventilation / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cognitive performance; Health symptoms; Perceived air quality; Ventilation