Like a spotless operating room ready for surgery, a glistening, stainless-steel chamber sits - pristine and splendid - at the centre of a nondescript National Research Council laboratory in Ottawa. Tubes and pipes feed the room with air that has been purified by dust-cleansing particle filters and then by charcoal to remove airborne chemicals. The interior walls - along with the heating ducts, coils and fans in the ventilation system - are made of polished stainless steel, an alternative to traditional building materials which absorb chemicals that conic into contact with them.

Within these super-sterile confines, engineer Dr. Jianshun Zhang hopes to solve the mystery of "sick building syndrome," which is in part a product of the air-tight, energy-conserving architecture of the 1970s. Buildings become "sick" when chemicals released by construction materials, office equipment and furnishings accumulate inside. These largely petroleum-based chemicals are the suspected cause of a variety of ailments, from headaches, nausea and burning eyes to skin irritations and general fatigue.

Zhang’s mission is to measure those emissions and to advise architects on how to offset their effects. And so the common, inanimate elements of the indoor landscape from fax machines to insulation and carpets - are placed in the chamber, where "sampling tubes" capture the chemicals they emit. Elsewhere in the lab sits a smaller stainless-steel chamber, equipped with hairlike sensors that can measure the effect of small changes in airflow, temperature and humidity on the rate of chemical emissions. From this painstaking research, Zhang plans to develop a standard method for testing emissions - which he hopes will become the international norm - and compile a database listing the types and rates of chemicals released by building materials and furnishings.

The ultimate goal of the five-year project - which is being undertaken in co-operation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Washington, D.C. - is to incorporate the new data into a software program that will make it easier to choose materials and ventilation strategies at the design stage to control chemical buildup.

Zhang believes there is a sizable market for the software, since sick building syndrome is a global phenomenon with significant costs. Recently, a jury awarded five workers in Washington, D.C., close to $1 million (U.S.) for illnesses linked to poor indoor air quality. Although scientists have yet to prove a definitive link between chemical emissions and health, Zhang says "people cannot wait for that. We have to take some measures now."

Above article was previous published in the March/April issue of the Canadian Geographic.



First published November 1996