0 Office Environment Can Impact Health and Productivity

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Wil Catlin

Green and environmentally safe office buildings in Boston

Credit: Boston Globe

The environment that surrounds us impacts our health, this is a fair statement and most would concur. The offices that we work in need to be as healthy as possible due to the amount of time that we spend indoors. Consulting firm Arup, at 60 State Street, has worked very hard to provide a healthy work environment for staff and clients.

From the Boston Globe:

Arup installed motorized sit-to-stand desks, showers to accommodate people running or biking to work, quiet zones and collaboration areas to encourage movement and minimize distractions, and a filter to reduce the amount of chlorine in the drinking water. The cleaning routine has also been intensified, with light switches and door handles wiped down regularly.

“We spend 90 percent of our time indoors, yet we spend almost all of our time thinking about outdoor air pollution,” said Joseph Allen, director of the three-year-old Healthy Buildings program at Harvard University’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, which has studied the benefits of keeping employees in top form. “What we’re doing here is quantifying what people intuitively know. When you’re stuck in a conference room that’s too hot, there’s no ventilation, you don’t perform as well.”

0 Green Office Buildings Improve Productivity and Quality of Sleep

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Wil Catlin

Credit: BBJ

When considering your new office building studies show that a “green” building leads to workers scoring higher cognitively. The Massachusetts RMV building is Roxbury closed by the Weld administration due to “sick building syndrome” and had to relocate 600 workers.

From Highbeam:

Workers in certified “green” buildings score 26.4 percent higher on cognitive function tests, when compared with workers at the same companies who happen to work in a non-certified building, according to a new study out from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

The green-building workers also had sleep scores that were 6.4 percent higher than their coworkers in non-green buildings. The study controlled for job category, education and salary.

0 Cambridge Aims to Make Labs Greener

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Wil Catlin

Credit: The Boston Herald

How green is your Cambridge lab space? The City of Cambridge is trying to make lab space as green as possible.

“A city task force has been meeting for nearly a year to come up with a way for new buildings in Cambridge to be “net zero” to significantly reduce emissions. But some of the most energy-intensive buildings in Cambridge are biotech labs, which require a significant amount of specialized infrastructure, including high-powered ventilation systems to deal with any potentially hazardous gases,” the Boston Herald reports.

The Herald article offers a detailed look at the steps required — and planned — for Cambridge buildings to produce “zero emissions.”