Performance, acute health symptoms and physiological responses during exposure to high air temperature and carbon dioxide concentration

• DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.12.020
• Publication Date: 2016-12-13T23:30:43Z
• Authors: Weiwei Liu; Weidi Zhong; Pawel Wargocki
• Keywords: Work performance; Carbon dioxide; 13. Climate action; Temperature; Physiological responses; /dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action; name=SDG 13 - Climate Action; /dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/good_health_and_well_being; name=SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being; Acute health symptoms; 01 natural sciences; 3. Good health; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Abstract Human subjects were exposed for 3 h in a climate chamber to the air temperature of 35 °C that is an action level, at which the working time needs to be diminished in China. The purpose was to put this action level to test by measuring physiological responses, subjective ratings and cognitive performance, and compare them with responses at temperature of 26 °C (reference exposure). Moreover, CO 2 was increased to 3000 ppm (CO 2 exposure) at 35 °C to further examine, whether this change will have any effect on the measured responses. Compared with the reference exposure, exposure to 35 °C caused subjects to report feeling uncomfortably warm, to rate the air quality as worse, to report increased sleepiness and higher intensity of several acute health symptoms. Eardrum temperature, skin temperature, heart rate and body weight loss all increased significantly at this exposure, arterial oxygen saturation decreased significantly, while the percentage of adjacent inter-beat cardiac intervals differing by > 50 m (pNN50) decreased significantly, indicating elevated stress. The performance of addition and subtraction tasks decreased significantly during this exposure, as well. Increasing CO 2 to 3000 ppm at 35 °C caused no significant changes in responses. Present results reaffirm the selection of 35 °C as an action level, and show that concurrently occurring high CO 2 levels should not exacerbate the hazards.