Changes in respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms in occupants of a large office building over a period of moisture damage remediation attempts

There is limited information on the natural history of building occupants' health in relation to attempts to remediate moisture damage. We examined changes in respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms in 1,175 office building occupants over seven years with multiple remediation attempts. During...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2018-01, Vol.13 (1), p.e0191165-e0191165
Main Authors: Park, Ju-Hyeong, Cho, Sook Ja, White, Sandra K, Cox-Ganser, Jean M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Asthma
Biology and Life Sciences
Buildings
Chills
Chromatography
Demographics
Demography
Employees
Exposure
Fatigue
Fever
Fungi
Headache
Health aspects
Limulus
Management
Mass spectrometry
Medicine and Health Sciences
Microbial ecology
Microorganisms
Moisture
Moisture content
Mold
Occupational safety
Office buildings
Pharynx
Public health
Questionnaires
Remediation
Respiratory symptoms
Scientific imaging
Smoking
Social Sciences
Software
Studies
Surveys
Wheezing
Work stations
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Summary:There is limited information on the natural history of building occupants' health in relation to attempts to remediate moisture damage. We examined changes in respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms in 1,175 office building occupants over seven years with multiple remediation attempts. During each of four surveys, we categorized participants using a severity score: 0 = asymptomatic; 1 = mild, symptomatic in the last 12 months, but not frequently in the last 4 weeks; 2 = severe, symptomatic at least once weekly in the last 4 weeks. Building-related symptoms were defined as improving away from the building. We used random intercept models adjusted for demographics, smoking, building tenure, and microbial exposures to estimate temporal changes in the odds of building-related symptoms or severity scores independent of the effect of microbial exposures. Trend analyses of combined mild/severe symptoms showed no changes in the odds of respiratory symptoms but significant improvement in non-respiratory symptoms over time. Separate analyses showed increases in the odds of severe respiratory symptoms (odds ratio/year = 1.15‒1.16, p-values
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0191165