Are you experiencing sick building syndrome in your house or office?

By Collins Kowuor

It is generally said that rain is a blessing. This may not be true when it is raining cats and dogs, as it has been. Reports in the media and outside the media including my own recent experience near T-Mall may confirm this.

The storm water from Langata road was simply furious and didn’t hesitate to teach anything that tried to block its path a lesson. I also came across a report from a landlord who lost a very good rent payer due to “heating” himself to ward off cold.

The police suspected carbon monoxide, an odourless and colourless gas that is difficult to detect. It can make you drowsy, thinking that you are falling asleep yet you are dying. These reports made me remember the syndrome of sick buildings. Others may ask, can buildings be sick or healthy? I say a BIG yes.

Building syndrome is a situation in which an occupant of a building experiences acute health and discomfort effects that appear to be linked to time spent in a building, but no specific illness or cause can be identified. The effect may be experienced in a particular room or the whole building and it mainly affects residential and office buildings. Some of the symptoms may involve experiencing headaches, eye, skin or throat irritation, sneezes, dry cough, fatigue, dizziness, flu, or general health problems. The other indicator apart from the cause not being known is that most complainants report relief soon after leaving the room or building.

It was reported in 2002 that employees of a certain major building in Nairobi regularly complained of constant headaches during morning hours. On investigation by building services experts, it was found out that ventilation through the building’s central court had been blocked after it was roofed. Office vehicles were being parked in the court after work in the evening.

This meant that whenever drivers revved their car engines in the court in the morning, the exhaust fumes would not be let out of the building. The fumes would instead get into the building’s upper floors through the windows facing the court. The workers would then inhale these fumes, hence the symptoms.

A World Health Organisation report indicates that up to 30 per cent of new and renovated buildings worldwide may be linked to the symptoms of sick building syndrome. Scary? It may be caused by inappropriate building materials or where spaces between buildings are either limited or non-existent, leading to poor ventilation and poor natural lighting. The recommended standard of ventilation is a minimum of 15 cubic feet of outdoor air per minute (cfm) per person for residences and 20cfm per person for office spaces.

Construction of buildings in damp areas without use of appropriate damp-proof materials or technology can result in dampness rising in the walls leading to damp rooms. Dampness causes moulds to build up with potential for causing allergic reactions and respiratory diseases. This syndrome is common in low-income residential housing and has implications on cost of healthcare. Nairobi being a swampy area, especially the plains of Eastlands, there is always the risk of dampness rising, where water seeps into the walls, causing dampness in the rooms.

Buildings may also become sick due to chemical contaminants from office machines, carpets and furniture as well as biological contaminants like bacteria, moulds, dust mites and viruses. These can cause acute effects on the occupants of a building.

How do we avoid this problem? All new buildings should have occupation certificate (issued after due process of certification) before it is released to the market either for sale or rental purposes. Other solutions include enhancing cross-ventilation, adherence to building code, encouraging natural ventilation in buildings, avoidance of damp-related contamination, specification of non-toxic building materials; providing space buffers between buildings and better building orientation. In the tropics, preventing heat build-up from the sun and enhancing cooling inside the building by having windows facing north and south while avoiding eastern and western-facing facades would help. Let’s have good building designs, materials, construction and use.