Impact of VOCs on decision making and productivity

Abstract

Environmental conditions can affect the productivity of workers performing a variety of tasks including manufacturing assembly, data entry and management. These factors might include physical, chemical, biological and social agents, but the relative effect of individual factors is not known. A pilot project was conducted to assess the relationship between productivity and exposure to latex paint in indoor environments. This was achieved by utilizing a sophisticated Strategic Management Simulation (SMS) tool that has been proven to accurately measure decrements and improvements in human effectiveness across a wide range of chemical and environmental exposure scenarios. Prior research with the SMS simulation technique shows considerable differences in human functioning when drug treatments are compared with placebo treatments, when drugs are compared with each other and when dose levels of specific drugs are compared. Among others, the SMS has been used to measure the effects of beta-blockers, caffeine, antihistamines, alcohol, marijuana and tranquillizers. Latex paint was chosen as the exposure for this pilot study because of (1) Institutional Review Board considerations and (2) the fact that latex paints contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs), known factors affecting indoor environmental quality. For this project the decision making and productivity abilities of study participants were assessed using the SMS after exposure to two different and well-characterized environmental conditions. One condition was the ‘control’ or when a participant is not painting and has not been for the previous 48 hours. The second condition was an ‘exposure’ and will occur when the participant has been painting for a two-hour period. For both conditions, air samples were collected and analysed for VOCs.