To Other Workplace Hazards, Add Smog

Office smog probably isn’t something you have heard of yet. But you will soon. In this case, it’s not automobiles that are to blame for the bad air but other kinds of machines: the faxes, photocopiers and printers that are filling up your office.

Their electronic hummings would be innocent enough if it were not for the activities of humans. Well-meaning office staff come to work covered in deodorants and perfumes, which gradually fill the office air. An expensive perfume may contain as many as 100 different organic ingredients, all of which gradually evaporate. And that’s just a start. There are solvents coming from recently dry-cleaned clothes, from the paint-work on the office walls and from the glue that keeps comfortable padded chairs together. There are the stains that make the desk look like mahogany and the powerful adhesives that hold down floor tiles. All help create an airborne soup of “volatile organic compounds,” or VOCs.

Scientists have known about them for years. But they haven’t been nearly quick enough to appreciate that all these chemicals - each of which may be harmless enough on its own - might turn into something quite different if they are mixed together and helped to react.

Now they are learning that photocopiers, faxes and other electronic machinery can create ozone. Add the ozone to the mix of volatile organic compounds and you get hydroxyl radicals. They spell trouble.

Out of doors, these agents are spewed out by automobile engines and help create photochemical smog. Indoors, the hydroxyl radicals are destructive and tear apart other VOCs to create still more harmful chemicals. Among them are acetic acid and even nitric acid.

These chemicals attack human and machine alike. They can coat the chips inside your computer, resulting in its untimely demise. Sometimes the machine just gets sick. Inexplicable “soft” errors, a misplaced 1 or 0 in a digital signal, or an apparently faulty piece of equipment that starts to work again when it is unplugged and plugged in again can be a sign that the air is not right and the computer is beginning to go under. Humans can get sick, too. Outbreaks of tiredness, irritability, dry throats, blocked noses and headaches can all be symptoms that office smog has begun to form.

It would be nice to have a smog meter on the wall to warn when things are getting rough. Unfortunately, no one knows exactly what to measure.

When safe levels for exposure to chemicals are set, each chemical tends to be tested on its own. But when individual chemicals are well below danger level, their effects can add up in a mixture and become much more powerful. We don’t know which chemicals react, how they add up and when they might become dangerous.

Environmental agencies have been slow to investigate - in part because so-called “sick-building syndrome” has been out of fashion since a couple of early studies failed to clearly link ill health and air quality inside buildings.

But expect change soon. The first news will likely come from Ispra in northern Italy, where the European Union’s top collaborative research laboratory is located. Shortly, researchers there will release a checklist of the 60 airborne chemicals that can be found in offices and are believed most injurious to human health.

Next year, word should come from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Building Assessment Survey and Evaluation, or BASE. EPA is evaluating 100 office buildings across the United States, testing the ventilation, measuring the chemicals in the air and correlating everything with the occupants’ answers to questions about their health.

Office smog is soon going to emerge as a major talking point. Like it or not, humans, perfumes, chemicals and electronic equipment may not always be capable of living happily together in an enclosed energy-efficient space.

It’s not time to panic - clearly, many people work and remain healthy in offices crammed full with faxes, photocopiers and printers. But it is time for EPA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to accelerate their efforts to set standards for office air quality and to provide guidance about how they can be achieved.

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