For each paragraph, choose the most suitable heading from the list which follows. There is one extra heading you do not need to use.

A SICK WORKING ENVIRONMENT

A. Sick buildings are usually modern.

B. People may be suffering from mental illness.

C. People may suffer eye-strain.

D. Sick buildings make people sick.

E. There is no escape.

F. The office worker has become an industrial worker.

G. It is hard to know if it is the people or the buildings that are sick.

H. The air may be polluted.

1

Like people, buildings get sick. When they do, the people inside them also get sick. They suffer from coughs, colds, wheezes, skin rashes, sickness, tiredness, headaches, eye troubles. They work slowly and inefficiently. They stay away from work. In a typical case in a large London office block, about 25 years old, staff complained about constant tiredness and lack of natural light. The complaints dragged on for years. A survey in 1987 found that 80 per cent of British office workers suffered sickness related to the buildings in which they worked. Tiredness was cited by 57 per cent, followed by stuffy nose, dry throat and headaches.

2

The trouble is the difficulty of knowing whether it is the people who are sick, or suffering from hysteria, or whether something has gone seriously wrong with the place they work in. A professor of design analysis at Cornell University gives the example of a building in Anchorage, Alaska, where three women, all heavy smokers, developed bronchitis. One of them was advised to wear a mask to work. The reaction of her colleagues led to an evacuation of the building, an investigation by consultants wearing full protec-tive clothing, newspaper reports, and many lawyers. No cause was ever found. On the other hand, he also cites the example of the headquarters of the US Environmental Protection Agency where 70 people fell ill. The outbreak was traced to 4PC, a chemical produced by the interaction between adhesive and foam backing on new carpets.

3

The United States Institute for Occupational Health investigates about 50 buildings a year. These are mainly energy-efficient “tight” buildings which save money by using recycled warmed air rather than cold air from outside. They are usually open-plan or “deep” offices, where daylight has been replaced by artificial lighting. Thirdly, they are offices dominated, of course, by the data processor.

4

What goes wrong? For a start, the whole place can be at the wrong temperature, usually too warm. A four degree rise above a comfortable 20C can half productivity. It is almost certainly too dry, with a relative humidity below 40 per cent, resulting in stuffy and stale air. Equally certainly, the air is dirty: too many people still smoke, and smoke containing ammonia, formaldehyde, phenols and hydrogen cyanide is breathed by nonsmokers. Gases are given off by synthetic carpets and furniture. Ozone is produced by malfunctioning photocopiers.

5

The lighting may be all wrong. Low-frequency fluorescent lights produce a flicker which the eye cannot see but the brain can. It causes anxiety and headaches. Medical studies have shown that headaches are less frequent on higher floors which receive more natural light. Headaches fall by half when high-frequency lights are introduced. If you wanted a building not to work in, it would be air-conditioned, dusty, date from the mid-seventies, have tinted and sealed windows, and house batteries of clerical workers.

6

The trouble may lie less in the building itself, and more in the design of the workplace and the jobs that people are expected to do. The office worker has become more like a factory worker, tied to a work station in an assembly line. You can introduce full spectrum lighting and you can litter the office with spider plants to eat the carbon monoxide, but the central problem remains. The modern office has been built to house machines, not people.

7

The new technology creates a prison, and people go “prison crazy”. An occupational health specialist says: “If you are trying to get the best out of your equipment, then the easiest thing is to chain your operator to the chair. Everything in the working environment is geared to keeping people working. Restaurants are close by. You can carry out food, People even come round selling sandwiches at the work station. But you are wringing the sponge dry, allowing it no time to recover.