Your Office Meeting Areas May Make You Dumber At Team Meetings Due To CO2 Build Up

If you work in an office,chances are you’ve attended a few team meetings holed up in a conference room with your boss and co-workers. In some cases you,once you get out,you might wonder if it was much hotter in there than the rest of the office. Well,not only are you correct about that,but the process could also be affecting your mental health.

As it turns out,when you’re placed in a small area with insufficient air flow (because it’s air conditioned) with a number of people,the Co2 and heat tends to build up. At least that is what the New York Times have found. They have carried out at least eight studies in the last few years have looked at what changes occur in the atmosphere in a room packed with people for a long time.

It is well known that air pollution can cause asthma,lung conditions,not to mention cancer in some cases. However,it turns out that low air quality can also affect your ability to think clearly,or at least as well as you can normally.

The main reason behind all this is the drive to make offices more energy efficient,either to keep heat in or to keep them cool (via air conditioners).This is done by using better insulation,but the process also involves reducing the air flow in / out of the building,as this air flow increases the loss or gain of heat.

But,whilst technology improvements have made it easier to insulate buildings and install AC cooling units,the process has also meant that we are actually sealing in all the buildup of gases and toxins released by office workers.

You may have noticed one of the effects of this,in that if someone on your office floor has a bad cold,you may well find that more people are catching it than is normal. This goes for you too of course,in fact there’s a higher likelihood you’ll catch the bug via the air on your office,than if you came across them on public transport.

However,indoor air quality is not monitored as much as outdoors,so scientists can’t say this for sure that this is the case.

What they can confirm however is that a CO2 build-up of over 1,200 parts per million (Pppm) is not good. You see,when you’re inhaling more carbon dioxide than is good for you,your blood vessels dilate,to try and absorb more oxygen from your blood into your organs. One of the effects of this,some researchers say,is to reduce neural activity between the parts of your brain. Effectively,that reduces your brain power and hence your decision-making process is impaired.

Unfortunately,they just can’t be sure to what extent that is. Dr Joseph Allen carried out a similar study in 2016. He suggests that,in order to ensure you have enough air flow to offset the concentration level of CO2,a conference room should have at least 6 cubic feet of air flow per minute per person.

Even that may not be sufficient though. Better then would be to equip conference rooms with CO2 sensors,or perhaps just place the room on an outside wall and give them opening windows and not place them in the centre of the floor.That way meetings can occur with a fresh air flow from an open window,without compromising the temperature on the rest of the floor.

Who knows,maybe this introduction of clean air may even give your staff more brain power so that they can better swap ideas to handle the situation you’re having a meeting for in the first place..

For more information please see https://brightvisionevents.co.uk