Effects of IAQ on Office Work Performance

Abstract

We reviewed 32 studies published since 1980 that have examined the effects of indoor air quality (IAQ) on work performance in non-industrial and non-educational spaces. We found that (i) reduced ventilation rates (VR)—indicative of poor air quality—can affect some aspects of cognitive performance, hence the performance of office work; (ii) toluene effects on work performance were only found at high concentrations that are not common in office buildings; (iii) the effects of CO2 – as a pollutant and not as a proxy for ventilation – were not consistent, as some studies found effects, others did not; (iv) similar inconsistencies as for CO2 were found for the effects TVOCs. Plausible reasons explaining the discrepancies are differences in tested populations such as participants’ age and occupation, sleep quality, experiment design, exposure time, task complexity, and uncertainty in pollution exposure. In addition to the research necessary to clarify the observed discrepancies, future investigations should focus on developing a shared understanding of the meaning of work performance and what are the methods and metrics to measure it, and estimating the magnitude and shape of the relationship between different variables that represent IAQ such as ventilation rate or CO2 and performance.