Abstract
The growing field of indoor health and comfort studies recently shifted from predicting the average comfort and wellbeing of a large population into identifying the needs of individuals in different scenarios. This study aimed to identify different profiles of office workers in the Netherlands who took part in the OFFICAIR study, based on their self-reported health and comfort. Associations of respondents’ health and comfort with gender and type of office indicated that female occupants experienced significantly higher numbers of building-related symptoms and consistently lower satisfaction levels of their office environment than male occupants. Workers in open space offices without partitions reported lower satisfaction and suffered from building-related symptoms more frequently than occupants in single person offices. TwoStep cluster analysis revealed three profiles of occupants: Healthy and satisfied workers, Moderate healthy and noise-bothered workers and Unhealthy and Air and temperature-bothered workers. While the first group was by far the healthiest, significant higher risks for building-related symptoms such as dry eyes (OR: 3.38), dry skin (OR: 2.87) and watering, itchy eyes (OR: 2.7) were identified for the unhealthy group than for the moderate healthy group. The results confirm the need of an integrated approach to better understand moderate and unhealthy groups in order to provide customised solutions for individuals with different complaints and needs.
Highlights
Office workers spend a large part of their time inside the buildings in which they work, office buildings should ensure comfort, health and wellbeing for their occupants’
While 64% and 48% blamed no particular season or no particular of day, more than one in five of the workers (23% and 42%) answered that symptoms tended to be worst in the winter season and in the afternoon of a day, respectively. 76% of the workers believed that any of the experienced symptoms was due to their office environment
This study raised a particular concern for female workers and open-plan offices in the Netherlands, as their self-reported comfort and health were in general much worse than the average scores from the European-wide OFFICAIR study
Summary
Office workers spend a large part of their time inside the buildings in which they work, office buildings should ensure comfort, health and wellbeing for their occupants’. An increase in thermal satisfaction raised comfort expec tations of other indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors, and had a positive effect on occupants’ productivity in a study performed by Geng et al [7]. Several indoor air quality (IAQ) studies highlighted various health-related issues reported by some of the building occupants who were dissatisfied with IAQ [3,12,13]. Many of these findings have not yet been reflected in present-day IEQ guidelines to prevent or reduce health and comfort effects of occupants
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