Is Your Office Killing You?

[Guest guest]

Is Your Office Killing You?

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_23/b3684001.htm

Sick buildings are seething with molds, monoxide--and worse

Everything was running perfectly that spring afternoon at the

courtyard-style Best Western Springdale in the suburbs of

Cincinnati. Room service was humming along at a reliable clip. The

floral-patterned comforters were getting fluffed. Kids were

splashing in the pool. Then, suddenly, General Manager Jim Crane got

an emergency call about a leak that was turning Room 529 into a

virtual waterfall. Within minutes, he and the hotel's burly engineer

were ripping apart the room's walls. Inside, they found something

out of a B-grade horror movie: a deathly smelling mold so gooey and

hairy it seemed like it was breathing.

Crane soon discovered that, like the Blob, the Aspergillus strain of

mold was everywhere: swarming through bathrooms, sprouting out of

ceilings, and creeping through the ventilation and vending machine

areas. This was May, 1998, and for the next year Crane worked to rid

the hotel of the mounds of black growth. He knew they were a

disaster for guest relations, but what he didn't realize was that

each time he took a breath, he was inhaling the mold's toxic fungal

spores. These bioaerosols landed on the delicate mucous membranes of

his airways and lungs, causing chronic inflammation and eventually

leading to a medical diagnosis of hypersensitivity pneumonitis. The

condition further scarred his lungs and eventually progressed into

pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that is painful, debilitating, and

sometimes even fatal. Slowly and invisibly, his workplace was

killing him.

Today, Crane wheezes on his living room sofa--paying bills with his

retirement savings and taking 17 different drugs each day. He filed

a lawsuit in January against the hotel's owners, Laks Enterprises,

which wouldn't comment on the suit. They lost the hotel through

foreclosure to Bank of America in September after spending more than

$2 million on an exhaustive remediation, and ''the hotel is now

safe,'' says the hotel's director of sales, Sullivan. Already,

though, Crane has lost half of his lung capacity. Says Crane's

physician, Dr. Eckardt Johanning, medical director of Eastern New

York Occupational & Environmental Health Center in Albany: ''Lack of

proper protection and maintenance in that building caused this

tragedy.''

NO STANDARD. Crane's case may be an extreme example of what can

happen when you work in a sick building, but he is hardly alone.

Employees at Levi Strauss, US West, BP Amoco, even the Environmental

Protection Agency, have claimed they suffered sick-building-related

illnesses. Cases like these happen so often, in fact, that the World

Health Organization estimates that one out of every three workers

may be toiling away in a workplace that is making them sick.

The culprit: a stew of largely undetected dangers--from the carbon

monoxide and other contaminants sucked into a building when air-

intake vents overhang exhaust-filled loading docks and parking

garages, to the volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) seeping out of

building materials, furniture, office equipment, carpet, paint, and

pesticides, to the molds and bacteria funneled through muck-filled

heating, ventilation, and cooling systems (HVACs). Even the smoke

from those puffing away at entrances gets sucked back into the

building, chimney-style, because of the suction from revolving doors

(what engineers call ''the stack effect'').

Putting in workaholic hours amid these contaminants is bad enough,

but what makes it even worse is that, unlike at home, most of us

can't even crack open a window at the office. Instead, we breathe

yesterday's air and work in monotonous, uniform spaces under a

forest of fluorescents, which can cause boredom, eyestrain, and

lethargy. For those with robust immune systems, this may not matter

much. But for 20% to 30% of the office population, the problems can

range from the mild--headaches, nausea, dizziness, short-term memory

loss, irritability, and itchy eyes and throats--to possible damage

to the nervous and respiratory systems. Doctors also link the

doubling of asthma rates since 1980 to bad indoor air.

Associated with sick-building syndrome is a controversial disease

called multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), which can make people

allergic to almost anything containing a man-made chemical. This

condition can sideline sufferers into surreal, boy-in-the-plastic-

bubble worlds: Don Paladin, a former teacher, got MCS from

pesticides sprayed at his school and is now forced to spend most of

his time in his aluminum-sided ''sanctuary.'' Other MCS victims say

they are forced to live outside or sport medical masks wherever they

go. No wonder the EPA calls indoor air quality one of the top five

environmental health risks of our time.

But even as the evidence mounts that sick-building illnesses are on

the rise, the extent of the problem has been almost impossible to

measure. Amazingly, the federal government has no effective

standards for indoor air quality in offices. The Occupational Health

& Safety Administration (OSHA) has standards that are supposed to

protect workers against individual contaminants such as benzene and

formaldehyde, both carcinogens. But those standards were set for

industrial workplaces and have been force-fit to apply to white-

collar offices. ''The OSHA standards don't always protect you from

all kinds of exposures that people are having at the office,'' says

Elissa Feldman, EPA's associate director of the Indoor Environments

Div. ''There is no federally guaranteed protection from exposure to

unhealthy air indoors.''

What's more, the chemical soup swirling through office air ''is a

complex mixture that we just don't know that much about and no one

has set standards for,'' adds Feldman. ''We're not [always] sure of

the health effects.'' This, despite the fact that we spend 90% of

our time inside--and more than half of that at work. What's also

scary is that pollutant levels indoors are two to five times, and on

occasion 100 times, more concentrated than outdoors, according to

the EPA. ''There are offices in America that I've been in that were

probably more dangerous to my health than a Superfund site,'' says

McDonough, former dean of the University of Virginia School

of Architecture.

WORKER CLAIMS. Twenty years ago, sick-building complaints were often

written off as the psychosomatic rantings of the disaffected--or

just the whining of lazy boss-haters. Rare cases--like the shocking

outbreak in 1976 of a mysterious lung ailment during an American

Legion convention (now known as Legionnaires' Disease)--were

considered medical aberrations that couldn't become commonplace.

Today, those attitudes are fading in the face of new research

buttressing the validity of sick-building syndrome, including new

studies linking symptoms to buildings that are damp or freshly

renovated.

Experts who study illnesses caused by buildings divide them into two

categories. The first--building-related illness--is when readily

identifiable microbes or fungi give people actual diseases, like the

Legionnaire's outbreak in April from bacteria blown out of the

Melbourne aquarium's air-conditioning system that killed four people

and infected 99 others. The second--sick-building syndrome--is when

people report symptoms that can't be traced to one cause. Local

governments are now starting to legitimize these sick-building-

related illnesses as a condition for social benefits. Nearly a dozen

states from New Mexico to land now recognize MCS as a bona fide

claim for workers' compensation. MCS is also covered--on a case-by-

case basis--under the Americans with Disabilities Act, obliging

employers to make accommodations for sufferers.

U.S. companies could save as much as $58 billion annually by

preventing sick-building illnesses and an additional $200 billion in

worker performance improvements by creating offices with better

indoor air, say researchers J. Fisk and Arthur H. Rosenfeld

of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. The

researchers also found that the financial benefits of improving

office climates can be 8 to 17 times larger than the costs of making

those improvements. And the same VOCs that affect people can also

harm expensive equipment. They create a film that covers computer

circuit boards and telephone switches, causing them to blink or conk

out, say Telcordia Technologies Inc. senior scientists J.

Weschler and Helen Shields. Just fixing those faulty phone wires has

cost telecommunications companies more than $100 million over the

past 10 years, they say.

Legal heat is also focusing attention on the issue. Last year, in a

landmark case, the Ohio State Supreme Court awarded Joann an

unprecedented $400,000 jury award from her former employer Centerior

Energy Corp., now a part of First Energy. The charge: She was forced

to keep working in her newly renovated office even after she had

been rushed to the hospital with chest pains and vomiting from the

chemical fumes in the new carpet. First Energy says no other

employees had complaints and that had to keep working in that

building in order to perform her job.

SKYLIGHTS. Indeed, sick-building cases are becoming more and more

common--and are often filed against building owner/operators. While

there were only a few such cases five years ago, today ''there are

hundreds,'' says New York environmental consultant Wayne Tusa. It

all adds up to indoor air becoming the next big environmental

target, just as awareness of outdoor pollution led to the landmark

Clean Air Act of 1970. Indeed, compared with European building

standards, the U.S. seems stuck in the environmental Dark Ages (page

124).

But despite this growing climate of recognition, sick-building

syndrome remains controversial. Many employers and building owner-

operators say workers exaggerate illnesses. Doctors are often split

on the issue, one camp dismissing many of the claims as hysterical,

while the other sees them as the tip of the iceberg, foreshadowing a

kind of chemical AIDS they say could be the scourge of the 21st

century.

Even a company that does the right thing by being honest with

employees about a building's dangers can be trapped in a legal

quagmire. That's what happened to BP Amoco PLC after the company

discovered a cancer cluster at its Naperville (Ill.) lab (page 128).

But a few businesses are taking action long before they get into

trouble. At its Zeeland (Mich.) factory, furniture maker Herman

has created a virtual California. Workers sport Hawaiian

shirts and blast the Beach Boys while working in an office that has

100% fresh air and daylight. After the factory opened, productivity

improved by 1.5%, enough to pay off the building's $15 million

mortgage. The place is so popular that 16 workers who quit last year

for better-paying jobs all returned within two weeks because they

said that they couldn't stand working in the dark. The U.S. Postal

Service saw an even higher productivity gain--a stunning 16% jump--

by simply installing skylights and improved lighting at its Reno

(Nev.) postal sorting office. ''If any CEOs have half a brain, they

would start to pay attention to the fact that their employees are

their main cost-and-benefit center,'' says McDonough, now a

consultant with Herman and Steelcase. ''They can't afford not

to do this.''

Blame the prevalence of sick buildings, in part, on the energy

crisis of the 1970s. That's when office buildings began to be built

as tight as tin cans, padded heavily with money-saving layers of

insulation and equipped with hyperefficient HVACs. In many cases,

these systems, run by operators looking to shave costs, suck in only

five cubic feet of fresh air per minute per person. ''That is almost

enough to keep people alive,'' quips New York architect F.

Fox Jr., whose firm designs environmentally friendly skyscrapers.

Indeed, to save money, some operators shut down the fresh-air

intakes altogether. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating &

Air Conditioning Engineers recommends that HVACs pump in 20 cubic

feet of fresh air per minute per person--a level below which

symptoms increase. But there is nothing compelling building

operators to do so, says Mark J. Mendell, team leader for the indoor-

air-quality research effort at the National Institute of

Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH).

Stagnant office air also circulates the residue of as many as 350

VOCs that are emitted by building materials, furnishings, and office

machines. For example, most office paints contain solvents that can

cause everything from eye, nose, and throat irritation to digestive

and central nervous system damage. Carpeting sometimes contains PVCs

that give off the carcinogen dioxin. Furniture is often made of

particle board that is bonded with resins made with carcinogen-

containing formaldehyde. That's not to mention the pesticides and

cleaning products swabbed over offices that, according to the EPA,

may also contain carcinogens that can be discharged into the office

air.

No surprise, then, that sick-building-related symptoms are on the

rise. Across the country, doctors who treat patients with sick-

building-related illnesses say caseloads have mushroomed 40% in the

past decade. ''There are more and more chemicals being introduced

into the office environment through synthetic products, and

ventilation systems have not caught up with being able to deliver

fresh air,'' says sick-building specialist Dr. B. Sullivan Jr.

of the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

What makes it difficult for sufferers seeking remedies is that OSHA

has no exposure limits for groups of chemicals that researchers

believe might act synergistically. OSHA standards for acceptable

amounts of benzene, for example, don't take into account the mixture

of VOCs reacting with one another. This could be making building air

even more dangerous, but because scientists don't yet know for

certain how to measure for these combinations, the problems may be

going undetected. That could also help explain, scientists say, why

some buildings that are making people sick are getting clean bills

of health. Or it may be that where standards do exist, OSHA's

permissible exposure levels, which are often influenced heavily by

politics and industry, are just too high. ''These exposure limits

don't have any real bearing on what's happening in white-collar

office buildings,'' says Alan Hedge, professor of human ecology at

Cornell University. ''In terms of chemical irritation, we're seeing

symptoms at levels way below OSHA's standards.''

''DEATH CUBE.'' An effort to enact sweeping indoor air standards

stalled six years ago, when OSHA tried to issue a comprehensive

smoking and indoor air-quality rule. The measure would have required

all building operators to do basic, routine ventilation checks,

change air filters regularly, and avoid using toxic cleaning

substances. Not surprisingly, Big Tobacco went into overdrive behind

the scenes to torpedo the move since the measure would have required

all workplaces to be smoke-free. Shortly thereafter, in 1995, the

104th Congress was ushered in, and it fiercely opposed any new

government regulations. The effort was squashed. ''Clearly, [sick-

building syndrome] is a significant problem--though it is difficult

to say how bad it is,'' says N. Jeffress, Assistant Labor

Secretary for Occupational Safety & Health. ''And it is very

difficult to do something about it.'' That may be true at the

federal level. But as states pass their own laws, Jeffress thinks it

may be possible to learn which approaches work and which don't.

Until then, the stories are likely to mount, though they rarely make

headlines. At Levi Strauss & Co., for example, internal memos

obtained by Business Week show that for eight years, at least 60

employees complained about the air quality at the jeans maker's

Stern office building in San Francisco. The workers were especially

concerned about smoke from the wood-burning oven in the Il Fornaio

restaurant on the ground floor. The mesquite-flavored fumes hung so

heavy in the air that some employees rigged umbrellas over their

desks to protect themselves from falling soot.

At least three people became disabled from acute asthma, severe

allergies, and other environmental illnesses as a result of

breathing in the carbon monoxide, the memos show. Things got so bad,

employees say, that one office even got the grim nickname ''the

death cube'' because three people who occupied it all died of

cancer. Levi's took steps to revamp the building's ventilation

system over the years, but the complaints persisted. ''It proved to

be challenging to track the problem down and find the right steps to

resolve it,'' says , Levi's senior manager for

communications. Finally, the company raised the air intake vents in

1997 so that the fresh air wasn't commingled with the exhaust from

the restaurant, and the problem was fixed, says.

Sometimes, the trouble doesn't stem from an ongoing problem but from

one simple renovation project. In 1991, at a former US West office

in Walla Walla, Wash., some construction workers forgot to cover up

the air-intake vents when they sprayed industrial-strength petroleum

sealant on the building's facade as a part of a roofing and

refurbishing project. Workers like clerk ita and

telephone operator Rosie Gies, who had had a perfect attendance

record during her first six years with the company, began suffering

from nosebleeds and dizziness. ''I could barely breath at work

because it hurt so much,'' says Gies, who eventually developed a

case of reactive airway disease so debilitating that she says she

couldn't lift her 3-year-old daughter. US West closed the office in

late 1996 when it consolidated its directory centers. ''We did

testing by independent consultants and found compounds well below

OSHA's permissible exposure limits,'' says US West Communications

Director Dana .

Often, that's exactly what happens. Companies bat away complaints

with test results showing that their workspaces meet OSHA standards.

But when the standards clearly have been violated, lawsuits such as

Celeste Morrell's can follow. Morrell was a case worker in the

Social Services Dept. of New York's Onondaga County in 1988 when her

department received a new shipment of wooden desks that had a foul,

chemical odor. Turns out the double-pedestal desks, like much

furniture, was made with particle board consisting of chips of wood

glued together with formaldehyde. After breathing in the fumes all

day, Morrell, a widowed mother of two, said she felt sick. When

investigators scoured the office, they found formaldehyde levels in

desk drawers that were up to five times OSHA's standard for short-

term exposure. Morrell's physician diagnosed her with formaldehyde

poisoning and ordered her not to work within 15 feet of the desks,

but she soon developed multiple myeloma, a form of cancer her doctor

linked to her office. Last September, just six months after her suit

went to nonjury trial, Morrell died at the age of 51. A judge is

still deliberating. ''Her desk killed her,'' says Morrell's

attorney, Littman of Ithaca, N.Y. Marc Violette, spokesman for

the New York State Attorney General, says the state won't comment on

the suit until after the judge has ruled.

HEAVY METAL. To make sure they never end up in court, some building

owners, such as New York developer Durst Organization, are taking

steps to erect greener and cleaner buildings on their own. Durst's

newest building, the rocket-shaped Conde Nast tower, has solar

panels, air intakes on every floor, and filters that screen out 85%

of the city's contaminants (most buildings have filters that only

keep out 35% of impurities). Some manufacturers, such as office

furniture makers Steelcase and Herman and office carpet maker

Interface, are using materials in office furnishings that are less

dangerous--a much needed move since many of the textile trimmings

used in office fabrics, for example, are considered hazardous waste,

a result of the heavy metal content of the dies and sealants used.

Consider the office chair: ''Most people are sitting on chairs that

are an amalgam of hundreds of chemicals that have never been defined

in terms of their effects on human health, and the deeper we look,

we find things that are cancer-causing chemicals,'' says the

University of Virginia's McDonough.

Following the lead of these pioneers could well pay off for more

companies. Time off from work due to illness can be cut by as much

as 30% if workers simply have control over their office air, one

study shows. Some states, such as New Jersey and California, are

leading the way by enacting some indoor air standards. The EPA is

also conducting its first-ever national assessment of the health of

the country's office building stock, the biggest such study ever to

be performed. Getting a better rating than the norm could be a

marketing hook and might allow owners to charge even higher fees in

today's helium-filled real estate market.

All this may signal the day when owner-operators make it a priority

to choose building materials that are safer, companies demand air-

quality reports before signing leases, and employees are as aware of

their office's health as their own. Just like stock options and

signing bonuses, workers are certain to start demanding fresh air

and sunlight once they find out that other employees are getting

them. Perhaps one day the office will even have its own annual

checkup. If not, many American workers may not be around to

complain. They'll be at home--sick.

Join an online discussion of sick buildings at

www.businessweek.com/forums/

By MICHELLE CONLIN

With Carey in Washington