I don't like meetings and I like the confirmation bias
Because I have spent too many hours of my life in useless meetings, I am always interested in reading studies that confirm my belief that most meetings are useless. You can thus imagine my excitement when I came across a study made by researchers at Harvard and SUNY Syracuse on the impact of bad air quality on cognitive functions. If I tell you that the title of the study is “Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers: A Controlled Exposure Study of Green and Conventional Office Environments” you might understand why this study has not made the headlines in newspapers or went viral on the internet. These guys aren’t very good at marketing their research.
Nevertheless, their work is great. The researchers exposed 24 professionals for six days to controlled environments in a research lab. During these six days, these professionals from all kinds of skilled office occupations, did their normal work for eight hours each day and then participated in a 1.5-hour long test of management, information gathering, planning and other cognitive skills. During the six days, the researchers changed the level of CO2 and other air pollutants as well as the ventilation of the room. I will focus here only on the effects of CO2 levels in the air as a marker for air ventilation and air quality.
The study tested participants in three settings. First, they simulated an environment of high CO2 concentration that is in line with CO2-levels found in today’s conventional buildings during a typical workday. These levels of CO2 are also typical of the levels found in school classrooms and meeting rooms after a 2.5-hour meeting with three to four people. Second, they simulated an environment of moderate CO2 concentration that is roughly representative of the air quality in a modern office building that is built according to green building guidelines, like the BREEAM standards. Finally, the researchers simulated an environment of low CO2-levels found in the best green buildings with higher air circulation rates than typical green buildings. These CO2-levels are still roughly twice the concentration of CO2 in outdoor ambient air.
The results of the study could not be clearer. Cognitive functions were severely impaired for higher CO2-concentrations in the room. Compared to the low CO2 case, cognitive functions were diminished by c. 16% in the moderate CO2 conditions of green buildings and diminished by half in a conventional office space. Let that sink in for a moment. Important cognitive skills like our ability to gather and interpret information, plan a course of action or work on moderately complex tasks are diminished by half after a day’s work in a conventional office or after a 2-hour meeting in a closed room. These results have been confirmed by similar studies with students. If that isn’t an argument why a meeting should be adjourned after an hour at the latest, I don’t know what is.
But aside from my aversion to meetings, these studies also show something far more important. Green buildings are a great investment for employers. Not only are green buildings better for the environment due to a reduced energy and CO2 footprint, they are better for the employees who work in it because of better air quality and they are better for the employers because the work that gets done is likely to be of higher quality than in conventional office spaces. It’s a win for everybody.
Impact of room CO2 levels on cognitive functions
Source: Allen et al. (2015), Fidante Capital.