March 2018 • Issue #10

Enhanced Light for Daytime Alertness

The Lighting Research Center from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) recently published new results from their GSA-sponsored research on circadian lighting. The study measured office workers in two federal buildings and two U.S. embassies and found that those who received a robust dose of circadian-effective light from supplemental LED lighting at their desks experienced less sleepiness and higher levels of vitality, alertness and energy over the course of the day. Read the article abstract here.

Collaboration is Key for Buildings and Health

GSA is advancing our understanding of health in the built environment by collaborating with other agencies and organizations on research, guidance, tools, education and pilots. In the past month, GSA presented research findings as part of the Center for Disease Control’s “Designing for Health Webinar Series” and  kicked off a new Interagency Sustainability Working Group Health and Wellness Task Force focused on federal facilities.

Buildings and Our Health

$225 Billion. The CDC estimates that workplace illnesses linked to the indoor environment cost over $225 billion per year in absenteeism and decreased satisfaction. Design standards frequently focus on comfort and avoiding acute health impacts. However, they rarely address the chronic conditions that lead to increased stress and impaired sleep.  

GSA controls over 300 million square feet of office space, and our decisions about how to manage it can have a lasting impact on occupants’ wellbeing. GSA is sponsoring innovative research using real-time wearable human health and indoor environmental quality (IEQ) sensors to monitor federal workers’ stress response, physical movement and sleep quality. Over 200 volunteers in four federal buildings across the country participated in the Wellbuilt for Wellbeing (WB2) research.

WB2 investigated a number of IEQ factors for chronic health effects and found a connection to relative humidity (RH). Individuals spending the majority of their work time outside of a range of 30-60% RH had higher measured stress and lower measured sleep quality. Current standards avoid high RH levels to prevent the growth of mold, mildew, and other pathogens but do not address low RH. Our findings align with medical literature linking low RH to the spread of pathogens, increased fatigue and irritation of eyes, throat and skin.  

Do our findings support tighter control of low RH? We hope to partner with researchers on further studies to corroborate our findings by adding humidification systems to a building with dry air. In the future, strategies to control RH by varying setpoint temperatures and using radiant cooling and heating may actually reduce energy use and improve comfort in the process.

Brian Gilligan is a high-performance building expert in OFHPB. He is the WB2 project manager, developing a data-driven understanding of how the indoor environment influences occupant health and wellbeing.

Kelli Canada is a research consultant from LMI who supports OFHPB. She served as the onsite research coordinator for the WB2 project, overseeing full project execution and currently supports ongoing data analysis.