We didn't always spend most of our time indoors. Some of
us still don't. From a global perspective, most of us still don't. But for most
of those living in the developed world, more time is spent indoors than out.
Human-body-pollution is not a problem outside, where it is maximally
distributed. Indoors, anything that is generated will accumulate, and unless it
is exhausted abundantly, it can have adverse health effects. Even our own
breath can fill the air until it reaches concentrations that actually have
effects on cognition (according to this
pretty good study,
at least.)
I never thought of myself as a smokestack, as an
incinerator burning garbage and belching toxins. But then I read a book called
The
Metabolism of the Anthroposphere, where I learned that half of all the
matter we ingest will then leave our bodies not as solid waste and not as
liquid waste. Half of everything we eat, by weight, is exhaled as carbon
dioxide, and as the by-product of energy production. We burn food for energy,
and emit the by-products like a tailpipe.
Cows release carbon dioxide when they breathe too,
because they are also burning food to fuel their bodies. And just like coal
power plants, except that their
bodies are the infrastructure of our anthroposphere.
These emissions may be bad for the planet, but when
humans do it, it's only a problem indoors. This hasn't been known as a problem
until recently. Coincidentally, it's also a problem that has been getting
worse. Then again, some of us might argue that the effect, reduced executive
decision-making proficiency, is not a problem at all(!).
***
The history of fresh air vs human offgas may traverse a
few threads. Sure, to this day people live in overcrowded and underventilated
conditions. Sure squared, too many of us are exposed to pollutants that are
magnitudes more harmful than CO2, and not just to our cognitive function but to
organs and critical systems.
This is a first world problem. And that the very few of
us on the planet of a swelling 7 billion can worry about lowering their
high-level executive decision-making abilities, means there are a few less of
us worrying about dying at 30 years old due to excessive inhalation of
machine-generated combustion by-products indoors, for example.
That being said, we have made progress in limiting
harmful exposures in the workplace and in the home. But we have neglected
ourselves as a point source of pollution. And baked into our building practices
from 1970 to 1990 (roughly) are energy efficient strategies that are really
good at making sure we stay cooped up in a pool of our own breath.
So to recap, once we get rid of all the really harmful
pollutants in the workplace – respirable particles, inert mineral fibers, toxic
chemical vapors, biologically-active dust – we then start to consider the
relatively invisible threat of carbon dioxide.
And why should we care; is it really a threat to human
health? Maybe not. But it is a threat to our mental health. Being in a room
that is poorly ventilated so that it contains double the amount of CO2 found
outdoors (and generated by the exhaling human occupants) makes you a bit less
sharp (actually a lot less sharp, see more details below). Double that even
more, and people get even less sharp.
Trying to prove that anybody was ever killed by being
less sharp is like trying to implicate climate change in a single heat wave.
But there are some people who care about this – those whose job it is to
provide facilities designed for people to think. Not to build cars or computer
parts or to make perfumes, but to think. Classrooms are thought chambers. What
is the most important thing people are doing in that space? Thinking.
Executive conference rooms are thought chambers. The
small amount of people in that one room could be making decisions worth a lot
of money. What if they could think 30% better, whatever the heck that means.
How about we should all want to think better. We should
all want as much fresh air as possible indoors at all times. That doesn't come
without a cost. You have to heat that outside air, or cool it, or take the
water out of it, or put it back in, and filter and circulate. That all costs
money, especially the heating and cooling.
How much is it worth to do one thing that would get every
student to think a little bit better? How much does it cost to condition their
fresh air during a cold snap or a heat wave? How much is it worth for a group
of six entrepreneurs to craft a plan that's a little bit better?
It may take a while for us to reach the point where we
can begin to care about these things, but this is the logical next step.
Progress will march on, and as more and more of the world
spends their time indoors, (and cleans up their act so they are no longer
worried about physically harmful pollutants), then more and more will be
looking for the next improvement in their environment. And this is final
frontier, removing our own carbon dioxide from the equation.
*Body odor is not
known to be a health hazard, although the WELL Certification regimen, for assessing the health and
wellness of the insides of a building, includes criteria for "Olfactory
Comfort;" Designers can obtain credits for providing abundant
exhaust/fresh air, or for controlling and limiting the migration of odors,
problems that occur to the human occupancy of interior spaces.
**It should be
noted that this
study, and those like it, do not tell
us how carbon dioxide negatively affects our cognition, just that it does, or
at least it did on the tests they administered.
Post Script
Jun 2019, phys.org
Squalene, which is the greasy, grimous protective
substance that once accumulated on your skin, interacts with ozone to produce secondary
pollutants.
Notes
By Veronique
Greenwood, The New York Times, May 6, 2019
Associations
of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile
Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers - A Controlled Exposure Study of
Green and Conventional Office Environments. Allen, Joseph G., Piers MacNaughton, Usha Satish, Suresh Santanam, Jose
Vallarino, and John D. Spengler. 2015. “Associations of Cognitive Function
Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound
Exposures in Office Workers: A Controlled Exposure Study of Green and
Conventional Office Environments.” Environmental Health Perspectives 124 (6):
805-812. doi:10.1289/ehp.1510037.
We simulated indoor environmental quality (IEQ)
conditions in “Green” and “Conventional” buildings and evaluated the impacts on
an objective measure of human performance: higher-order cognitive function.
On average, cognitive scores were 61% higher on the Green
building day and 101% higher on the two Green+ building days than on the
Conventional building day (p < 0.0001).
Cognitive function scores were significantly better under
Green+ building conditions than in the Conventional building conditions for all
nine functional domains.
There is compelling evidence, from both cross‐sectional
and intervention studies, of an association of increased student performance
with increased ventilation rates.
The net annual costs, ranging from a few dollars to about
10 dollars per person, are less than 0.1% of typical public spending on
elementary and secondary education in the United States.
