Sick building syndrome: preventive approach to reduce effect on office workers

A good building is a building that does not suffer from prolonged building defects. Defects in buildings that are left without maintenance will cause of sick building syndrome which will eventually affect human health. These symptoms usually occur on the first day back at work after a break, it occurs frequently in the same afternoon, and it can worsen in the evening and night after the person has left work. Sick building syndrome will also cause the occupants of the building or those who are in the building to feel uncomfortable and ultimately adversely affect health. Thus, the aims of this research is to propose the preventive approaches to eliminate sick building syndrome in a new building. Towards this end, the research sought to achieve the objectives which are to identify the contributing factors of sick building syndrome (SBS) that cause adverse effect on health of office workers, to determine the effect of sick building syndrome to the health of office workers and to suggest the preventive approaches to eliminate the effect of sick building syndrome on people in a building. The quantitative method approach was adopted via questionnaire survey. A total of 148 questionnaire has been distributed to the office workers at the state of Perak through random sampling method and 113 have been returned. The data were collected and evaluated by using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software. Based on the data, the dominant factor of sick building syndrome is poor indoor air quality in office building and the dominant of effect of sick building syndrome is the people feel uncomfortable. While the dominant of preventive approach is by doing a cleaning operation and also separate the extract ventilation from office machinery.