I’ve been in a few stinky, sweltering offices in my time. What do these researchers mean by poor air?
In this study they were measuring “fine particle matter” — that’s pollution from things like car exhausts, and CO2 levels which is indicative of poor ventilation. Precisely that stuffy feeling when 12 of you cram into a small meeting room for a couple of hours.
Ok, and how did they measure this?
This is the cool thing. Each of 300 office workers, in different industries, in China, India, Mexico, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, had a sensor on their desk that measured this in real time including temperature and humidity.
And then how and when did they measure cognition?
This is the clever bit - they measured cognition with a phone app that had cognitive tests on it. But they didn’t just measure at predetermined times (they did also) because there could be all sorts of variables that are influencing cognition such as time of day, or when you had your last coffee. If the sensor dropped below a certain threshold or went above a certain threshold then the participants were pinged and prompted to complete a cognitive test.
