Abstract
Even in sedentary activities, the workload is justifying more accurate studies about its impact on human beings mainly when related to different temperature and humidity conditions. One of these impacts is related to mental activity, which can be studied by the amplitude of Alpha and Beta waves. This study aims to evaluate brain activity in the occipital lobe from the amplitude of the EEG signal (Alpha and Beta waves) and to relate it to different conditions of temperature and relative humidity (RH) in sedentary tasks. Tests were performed under four different conditions (22°C-40%RH, 22°C-80%RH, 32°C-40%RH and 32°C, 80%RH) with 30 volunteers from which 15 were validated. Results suggest that both temperature and humidity influence the amplitude of the EEG signal (Alpha and Beta waves) in both hemispheres. The greatest amplitudes were found whenever environmental temperature and/or relative humidity values were higher. The results are in agreement with other authors.
Highlights
Working conditions are changing worldwide meaning that more and more workers spend most of their time performing sedentary activities, exposed to the most diverse conditions of the thermal environment
Skin temperature was controlled in two points, forehead, and neck in order to ensure the stability of test conditions
It is noted that skin temperature at the selected points increases with room temperature and with relative humidity, these results may be explained by the higher difficulty of thermoregulation when the humidity increases;
Summary
Working conditions are changing worldwide meaning that more and more workers spend most of their time performing sedentary activities, exposed to the most diverse conditions of the thermal environment. This change means that a large number of workers is doing a more or less gradual transition from tasks with high physical demands to tasks that require a higher mental effort (Boff & Abel, 2005). The thermal environment in the workplace is a major factor to improve the quality of life and well-being of the workers This becomes even more evident when temperature and relative humidity are high and associated with high mental workloads. O'Neal & Bishop (2010) have shown that the accident rate and risk behaviour in industrial environments increases simultaneously with activity and elevated temperatures (DiDomenico & Nussbaum, 2011; ONeal & Bishop, 2010)
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