Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) is an illness among workers linked to time spent in a building. This study aimed to investigate the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and symptoms of Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) among administrative office workers. The IAQ parameters consist of ventilation performance indicators, and physical and chemical parameters were measured using specified instruments for three days during weekdays. The SBS symptoms were assessed by a questionnaire adopted from the Industry Code of Practice of Indoor Air Quality (ICOP-IAQ) 2010 among 19 employees from the office in East Coast Malaysia. Relationship between past symptoms and present symptoms which are draught (past symptoms) with feeling heavy headed (present symptoms) ( r = 0.559, p < 0.05), room temperature too high (past symptoms) was highly correlated with feeling heavy headed (present symptoms) ( r = 0.598, p < 0.01) and cough (present symptoms) ( r = 0.596, p < 0.01). Room temperature (past symptoms) has a positive medium relationship with cough (present symptoms) ( r = 0.477, p < 0.05) and scaling itching scalp or ears (present symptoms) has a relationship between stuffy bad air ( r = 0.475, p < 0.05) and dry air ( r = 0.536, p < 0.05). There was a significant association between RH with drowsiness (χ2 = 7.090, p = 0.049) and dizziness (χ2 = 7.090, p = 0.049). The association was found between temperature and SBS symptoms between temperature with headache (χ2 = 7.574, p = 0.051), feeling heavy-headed (χ2 = 8.090, p = 0.046), and skin rash itchiness (χ2 = 7.451, p = 0.044). Air movement also showed a positive association with symptoms of feeling heavy-headed (x2 = 8.726, p = 0.021). PM 10 has positive significance with SBSS which are feeling heavy-headed (χ2 = 7.980, p = 0.023), and eyer's irritation (χ2 = 7.419, p = 0.038). The conclusion of this study showed that there were positive significant between temperature and relative humidity toward SBSS.
Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Samsuri Abdullah reports financial support was provided by Malaysia Ministry of Higher Education. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. CC BY 4.0.)