Sick Building Syndrome and Building-Related Illness

Details

• Personal Author:
  Kreiss, Kathleen
• Description:
  Since the late 1970s, consultants and public health agencies at the local, state, and federal levels have been barraged with requests for investigative assistance to determine the origins of and solutions to complaints of office workers regarding their indoor environments. The most frequent constellation of building-associated complaints is called sick building syndrome. It consists of mucous membrane irritation of eyes, nose, and throat; headache; unusual tiredness or fatigue; and, less frequently, dry or itchy skin. The hallmark of these symptoms is their tight temporal association with building occupancy and their rapid resolution, within minutes to hours, when affected office workers leave implicated buildings. Sick building syndrome is distinguished from more medically serious building-related illness by its subjective nature, reversibility, and high prevalence within implicated buildings and across the nonindustrial building stock in North America and Europe. Building-related illnesses include asthma, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, inhalation fever, rhinosinusitis, and infection. In contrast to sick building syndrome, these building-related illnesses are less common and may result in substantial medical morbidity. Building related asthma, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, and rhinosinusitis are usually accompanied by sick building syndrome symptoms among coworkers. Whether similar etiologies contribute to sick building syndrome and these building-related illnesses is still speculative. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Air Pollutants, Occupational Air Pollution Air Pollution, Indoor Asthma Asthma, Occupational Environmental Exposure Environmental Health Epidemiology Manufacturing And Industrial Facilities Occupational Health Respiratory Hypersensitivity Respiratory Tract Diseases Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety Ventilation Workplace

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• Keywords:
  Air-contamination Air-quality Bronchial-asthma Closed-building-syndrome Indoor-air-pollution Indoor-environmental-quality Industrial-environment Industrial-exposures Office-workers Respiratory-hypersensitivity Respiratory-system-disorders Risk-factors Ventilation-systems Workplace-studies

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• ISBN:
  9780781762991
• Publisher:
  Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Book
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; West Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DRDS - Division of Respiratory Disease Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20031618
• Citation:
  Environmental and occupational medicine, 4th edition. Rom WN, Markowitz SB, eds. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006 Dec; :1373-1380
• Editor(s):
  Rom WN; Markowitz SB
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2007
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Environmental and occupational medicine, 4th edition
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:8ceb8c80cc5d1d92d90bfb410d28ef823ba4131dcf98273865f90c21ff72189532ab962ec7c32741dc7fd992c0ad145a8d9f0d1b2ccea97e7ec5d3c2ab93b664
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/185863/cdc_185863_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.00 MB ]