Breathe easy? Not when the office may be toxic

[Guest guest]

Breathe easy? Not when the office may be toxic

PATRICK WHITE

Globe and Mail - Canada*

From Monday's Globe and Mail

August 6, 2007

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070806.wlhazards

06/BNStory/lifeWork/home

One morning 10 years ago, a Halifax-based technician for Environment

Canada arrived at work to find a mysterious manila envelope on her

desk. Curious, she turned it over. Out spilled a chemical filter

mask accompanied by a note from her boss.

" This is for you, " it read. " You are expected to wear it. "

For years, Charlotte Hutchinson had been suffering from headaches

and nausea that she attributed to her workplace. Her managers had

bounced her from office to office in search of one that didn't make

her sick. This flimsy plastic mask was her employer's final gambit,

she says.

" Can you imagine how ridiculous you'd look walking around the office

in a mask? " says Ms. Hutchinson, who no longer works for the

government.

Laser printers as bad as cigarette smoke

Printer emissions unhealthy, study warns

Ms. Hutchinson suffers from environmental hypersensitivity, a

condition that employers and even some doctors have traditionally

viewed with some skepticism. But new research on office toxins is

making Ms. Hutchinson look more like the office equivalent of the

canary in the coal mine.

Last week, Australian researchers unnerved cubicle dwellers the

world over with a report showing that laser printer emissions are as

bad for the lungs as a lit cigarette. Toner particles join the cloud

of invisible office toxins that researchers have been identifying in

recent years.

The research paints an unsettlingly toxic picture of modern

workplaces: desks laden with more germs than a toilet seat, office

ventilation systems circulating noxious gases, mould spreading

undetected in workplace walls, office chairs and keyboards warping

muscles and bones.

Ms. Hutchinson's biggest problem was the air. Until recently, people

with conditions such as hers were more sensitive to environmental

toxins than any available detection technology. Now, researchers are

using sensors that pick up particulate smaller than one micron, or

about one-50th the diameter of a human hair.

" We're gaining a new appreciation of this invisible pollution, " says

Bartlett, a professor at the school of occupational and

environmental hygiene of the University of British Columbia.

The problems don't stop at laser printers.

" We hear a lot of people saying they get headaches when they're

photocopying, " says Haverkate, who runs a Toronto-based

company that tests indoor air quality. " Sure enough, when someone

has a large job going, the [air quality] sensors go through the

roof. "

The particulate floating about offices wouldn't be so bad if

ventilation systems were up to the task of filtering it out. With up

to several hundred grunts' living, breathing and sweating bodies in

a sealed room for eight hours a day, office workers are almost as

dependent on good air circulation as airline passengers.

Mr. Haverkate once tested an office where workers were complaining

of persistent headaches. He found a cranky old furnace in the

basement and perilously high levels of carbon monoxide. " I

immediately directed everyone to get out of the building, " says Mr.

Haverkate, whose business has taken off since 2003, when Ottawa

passed a bill imposing a legal duty on company owners to protect

workers' safety. " I had a headache for the rest of the day, and here

these workers had been in there for weeks. "

Somewhat more benign are the germs swarming throughout workplaces.

Keyboards, mouses and phones can be so loaded up with microbes as to

constitute biological weapons. In tests throughout the Toronto area,

Mr. Haverkate has found that most computer keyboards are more rife

with microbial creepy-crawlies than bathrooms, a finding that props

up recent research from the University of Arizona.

Mr. Haverkate also employs a thermal imaging camera and yellow Lab

named Quincy to sniff out mould-infested walls. Moulds grow anywhere

that moisture builds up, and their health effects range anywhere

from respiratory impairment to organ damage.

The noxious air doesn't always come from within. Dr. Bartlett

routinely visits workplaces where bad air is being piped in from

outdoors.

Once she tested an office where the air was so redolent of styrene

that workers were falling ill. Trudging outside the office, she

found that the air intake for the entire office building was

situated right next to a fibreglass plant. " They were having a

terrible time there, " Dr. Bartlett says, " but they never connected

the two. "

Work stress and illness

Even if our offices are clear of mould, printer particles and more

biohazards than a medieval infirmary, we can ruin our bodies by

sitting and typing improperly. Desk work flattens out the lumbar

portion of our backs and distends the muscles in the area of our

shoulder blades, giving the seasoned office worker a distinct pear

shape.

And none of that even approaches the minefield of illnesses linked

to work-related stress, which triggers nearly half of all new

depression cases, according to a New Zealand study released last

week.

" Work involves your head more than your muscles these days, " says

Merv Gilbert, a University of British Columbia psychology professor

specializing in occupational health. " It used to be an injury to

your back that was the biggest problem; now it's an injury to your

brain. "

Those psychological wounds can be traced to a variety of sources,

but the most common factors in the workplace, says Gilbert says, are

overworking, underappreciation and bullying.

Some companies in Europe have introduced stress testing for

employees. But in North America, we're still lagging.

" Our health care system is woefully ill-informed about the

workplace, " says Dr. Gilbert, who recently developed a free online

self-help manual for depression in the workplace.

Considering all these office-linked maladies, cubicle dwellers could

be excused for a hint of paranoia. The scare can go too far,

however. " In some cases, these complaints need addressing, but in

many cases, it's just a seasonal flu spreading through the office, "

Dr. Bartlett says. " Hysteria quite easily takes hold. "

White