Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics

An average person spends 23 hours per day in an indoor environment. Evidence shows that poor air quality experience affects one’s health and productivity. However, little is known about how productivity is affected. Literature has shown that productivity is a subset of indoor air quality (IAQ) effec...

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Main Author: Shmitha Arikrishnan
Other Authors: Wan Man Pun
Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
Language:English
Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/157975
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1579752023-11-01T00:55:03Z Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics Shmitha Arikrishnan Wan Man Pun Interdisciplinary Graduate School (IGS) Camfil (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N) MPWAN@ntu.edu.sg Engineering::Environmental engineering::Environmental pollution Social sciences::Psychology::Consciousness and cognition An average person spends 23 hours per day in an indoor environment. Evidence shows that poor air quality experience affects one’s health and productivity. However, little is known about how productivity is affected. Literature has shown that productivity is a subset of indoor air quality (IAQ) effects on human cognition. Hence the thesis examines the effects of IAQ pollutants (PM2.5, TVOC and CO2 (bio-effluent)) on human cognition (creativity, working memory, inhibitory control (attention and response inhibition), cognitive flexibility & control (creativity), speed of information processing, planning, and fluid intelligence (reasoning and problem-solving)) and brain responses via EEG, Serious Brick Play and PEBL cognitive test battery. The controlled study involved 90 adult participants (21-35 years) with various backgrounds tested with a series of activities with controlled lunch once (8 hours) weekly for 21 weeks (3 rounds of 7 weeks each) consecutively. The controlled exposure was achieved by employing particulate and molecular filters whilst changing the rate of fresh air intake to manipulate the IAQ pollutants. The environmental chamber was designed to mimic an office environment equipped with a working desk, chairs, desktop, a set of Lego bricks, an EEG headset, disposable earplugs, a mineral water bottle, and an activities instruction sheet. In addition, other IAQ parameters (carbon monoxide (CO), formaldehyde, ambient temperature, relative humidity, bacteria count levels, fungi count levels, and ozone (O3)) stated in SS 554 were monitored during the study. The short-term exposure to increasing levels of IAQ pollutants increases cognitive stress that affects working memory related to anxiety, increased in mental effort, delay in reaction time, increased perceived complexity of a task, and effects on cognitive flexibility & control and planning. Significant results such as creativity (affected by variation in TVOC) are shown to improve by 10.8%, planning (affected by variation in CO2) is shown to improve by 25.8%, and speed of information processing (affected by variation in PM2.5) is shown to improve by 272.7ms. The single-blind longitudinal study concluded that different aspects of IAQ affected various cognitive parameters. For an individual employee over the space of 1 year, the value of the increased performance is S$1.66. The short-term effects make it profitable over the space of many years. Doctor of Philosophy 2022-05-16T10:07:19Z 2022-05-16T10:07:19Z 2022 Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy Shmitha Arikrishnan (2022). Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics. Doctoral thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/157975 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/157975 10.32657/10356/157975 en This research is financially supported jointly by Camfil (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. And ERI@N This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). application/pdf Nanyang Technological University
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Engineering::Environmental engineering::Environmental pollution
Social sciences::Psychology::Consciousness and cognition
spellingShingle Engineering::Environmental engineering::Environmental pollution
Social sciences::Psychology::Consciousness and cognition
Shmitha Arikrishnan
Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics
description An average person spends 23 hours per day in an indoor environment. Evidence shows that poor air quality experience affects one’s health and productivity. However, little is known about how productivity is affected. Literature has shown that productivity is a subset of indoor air quality (IAQ) effects on human cognition. Hence the thesis examines the effects of IAQ pollutants (PM2.5, TVOC and CO2 (bio-effluent)) on human cognition (creativity, working memory, inhibitory control (attention and response inhibition), cognitive flexibility & control (creativity), speed of information processing, planning, and fluid intelligence (reasoning and problem-solving)) and brain responses via EEG, Serious Brick Play and PEBL cognitive test battery. The controlled study involved 90 adult participants (21-35 years) with various backgrounds tested with a series of activities with controlled lunch once (8 hours) weekly for 21 weeks (3 rounds of 7 weeks each) consecutively. The controlled exposure was achieved by employing particulate and molecular filters whilst changing the rate of fresh air intake to manipulate the IAQ pollutants. The environmental chamber was designed to mimic an office environment equipped with a working desk, chairs, desktop, a set of Lego bricks, an EEG headset, disposable earplugs, a mineral water bottle, and an activities instruction sheet. In addition, other IAQ parameters (carbon monoxide (CO), formaldehyde, ambient temperature, relative humidity, bacteria count levels, fungi count levels, and ozone (O3)) stated in SS 554 were monitored during the study. The short-term exposure to increasing levels of IAQ pollutants increases cognitive stress that affects working memory related to anxiety, increased in mental effort, delay in reaction time, increased perceived complexity of a task, and effects on cognitive flexibility & control and planning. Significant results such as creativity (affected by variation in TVOC) are shown to improve by 10.8%, planning (affected by variation in CO2) is shown to improve by 25.8%, and speed of information processing (affected by variation in PM2.5) is shown to improve by 272.7ms. The single-blind longitudinal study concluded that different aspects of IAQ affected various cognitive parameters. For an individual employee over the space of 1 year, the value of the increased performance is S$1.66. The short-term effects make it profitable over the space of many years.
author2 Wan Man Pun
author_facet Wan Man Pun
Shmitha Arikrishnan
format Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
author Shmitha Arikrishnan
author_sort Shmitha Arikrishnan
title Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics
title_short Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics
title_full Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics
title_fullStr Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics
title_full_unstemmed Indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics
title_sort indoor air quality and cognitive health: a study in the tropics
publisher Nanyang Technological University
publishDate 2022
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/157975
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