Full article at:New research from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that workers in high-performing, green-certified buildings think and sleep better than those in similar buildings that were not green-certified.
Led by Dr. Joe Allen, director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings program, researchers studied 109 workers in 10 buildings in various climate zones across the country for one week. All the buildings were high-performance in terms of having high ventilation rates and low total volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but six were specifically green-certified.
The researchers found that compared to workers in the non-certified buildings, workers in the green-certified buildings had 26 percent higher cognitive function scores, reported 30 percent fewer “sick building” health symptoms, and saw 6.4 percent higher “sleep quality scores” (as measured by wearable sleep monitors).
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You may be wondering how it is that people in green-certified buildings slept measurably better at night. The answer appears to be better quality (bluer) light and more light (a larger contrast between daytime exposure and night-time):
The findings from this study were presented pre-publication at the U.S. Green Building Council’s annual Greenbuild conference. More information on both studies is available here.
https://thinkprogress.org/green-buildings-improve-thinking-and-sleep-29c2d47cc037#.fjuv0zail
. A personal annoyance is that although the building is LEEDS certified and although they have special spaces in the adjacent parking garage marked for Low Emitting Vehicles, the only chargers are L1.
