Assessment of indoor air quality and sick building syndrome (SBS) in selected laboratories at UiTM Puncak Alam

This study was conducted to investigate the association between indoor air quality and the prevalence of Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) among the laboratory staff of UiTM Puncak Alam. A set of questionnaires were distributed to 80 laboratory staff with response rate of 100%. The level of temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, respirable particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds, total fungal and bacterial count were being assessed in 40 laboratories. The prevalence of sick building syndrome also showed no significant differences. The most prevalence symptoms were “stuffy nose” (35%), “eye irritation (32.5%)” and “headache (25%)”. There were no significant differences of the physicochemical parameters between type of laboratories, buildings and departments. None of the physicochemical parameters exceeded the recommended range of Industrial Code of Practice of Indoor Air Quality. There were significant association of sick building syndrome with low temperature (x² =8.26, p =0.012), low humidity (x² =14.5, p <.001) and high level of PM10 (x² =7.235, p =0.018). The highest reading of total fungal count were recorded at Histology laboratory from Department of Medical Lab Technology meanwhile the lowest total fungal count recorded were from laboratories from Optometry Department. Upon analyse using SPSS, there are significance difference between buildings and type of laboratories (p =0.022 and p =0.03) but, there is no significant difference between comparison of total fungal count with departments (p =0.057). The analysis by SPSS also showed that there is no significant difference between SBS prevalence and total fungal count (χ2 =7.029, p =0.219). The range of all TBC readings were within the acceptable ICOP limit of 500 CFU/m³ . No significant different of TBC reading were found between buildings, departments and types of laboratories .The Nutrition and Dietetic Department in FSK 1,5 recorded the highest mean of TBC reading (352.0 CFU/m³ ) while the lowest were obtained from Nursing Department (176.0 CFU/m³). In this study, the TBC of wet laboratories were found significantly higher compared to dry laboratories (p<0.010). The wet laboratories had the TBC ranged from 57.5 to 488.5 CFU/m³ while in dry laboratories ranged from 57.5 CFU/m³ to 387.9 CFU/m³ The association of TBC with SBS prevalence were found statistically significant (x² =5.625, p =0.018) which indicate the bacterial contamination could cause the SBS among the laboratory’s workers.