The analysis of sick building syndrome problems on office employees and the proposed solutions

Abstract

Sick building syndrome (SBS) is still becoming an unheard term mostly for ordinary people in Indonesia. Therefore people don’t know exactly what it means to their life. SBS is a term that refers to a set of allergic symptoms influencing some employees working performance when they work in a building and gradually disappearing when they leave the building. Some health disturbances experienced by office workers that sit mostly in side an enclosed room are eyes and nose irritations, throat discomfort, cold, red spotted skin, headache, dizziness and nausea, dry coughing, and sneezing. All of these irritation and discomfort are classified as SBS if at least there are 20% of the employees in the building experienced above mentioned health disorders. SBS comes up when the working environment is not in a healthy condition or is not maintained as said in the designed operating procedures. These facts are based on the researches done by the experties in buildings equipped with modern facilities and ventilation for air conditioning system. In this research, employees in a building “X” in Jakarta is set to be the research object. To start with, some questionaires were distributed to some population. This was done to identify the existence of SBS within this building and the symptoms were identified from the employee answers. From the data collected here, analysis was made to determine the causes and the impact of SBS for the employess in this building. The result of this work was utilised to propose an improvement in the working environment and to advise a procedure the employees can implement to prevent the SBS from happening in their working area. A checklist is also provided to control and to check the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) system and the sources of potential polution in the building. From this research, it is hoped that employees are becoming aware to their working environment and to always keep it healty and proper.