Headline June 10, 2019/ '' 'QUALITY AIR STUDENTS' ''

'' 'QUALITY AIR STUDENTS' ''

THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY : The universe's greatest ever influencer prepares the world  for love, justice, harmony, peace and progress. This truth is worth it.

MANY STUDIES HAVE ALSO SHOWN that increasing the ventilation rate in schools can raise  children's scores on tests and speed at tasks and reduces absences.

About 10 years ago, William Fisk, a mechanical engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and his colleagues put people in rooms where the carbon dioxide levels varied.

They exposed subjects for hours to concentrations as low as 600 ppm, fairly low for indoors, and as  high as 2,500 ppm - a high but not astronomical amount that is probably not uncommon in crowded spaces.

Carbon dioxide levels in some classrooms can be twice as high, Mr. Fisk noted in a later article.

The scientists had their subjects take a problem-solving test that measured real-world productivity  and decision making skills, said Usha Satish, a professor of psychiatry at SUNNY Upstate Medical University and co-author of the research.

The test generates scores for broad attributes like basic strategy and initiative. The team found a strong relationship between seven of the nine headings they looked at and carbon dioxide levels.

The higher the carbon dioxide, the worse the test-takers did; at 2,500 ppm, their scores were generally much worse than at 1,000 ppm.

Other scientists who read the study got interested in the subject. A team lead by Harvard researchers published similar results in 2018.

They had office workers come into a mock workplace for six days and take the same kind of problem-solving test while exposed to various concentrations of both carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds commonly found in office buildings.

As levels of carbon dioxide rose from 550 ppm to 945 ppm to 1,400 ppm, subjects scores under most headings declined substantially. [Problem-solving ability also seemed to suffer as levels of volatile organic compounds rose.]

''What we saw were these striking, really quite dramatic impacts on decision making performance. when all we did was make a few minor adjustments to the air quality in the building,'' said Joseph   Allen, a professor at Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health who led the study.

''Importantly, this was not a study of unique, exotic conditions,'' he added.''It was a study of conditions that could be obtained in most buildings, if not all.''

BREATHE OUT
Not every study that sets out to check the relationship of indoor carbon dioxide to cognition finds a clear effect. Several studies using simpler tests of cognitive ability like proofreading a text, have not shown such a shift.

Two studies using the same, more complex test on submarine crews and people meant to be representative of NASA astronaut corps also did not turn up a connection, said Pawel Wargoski, a professor of civil engineering at the Technical University of Denmark.

That doesn't mean the studies that documented the effects were flawed. It could be easier to compensate for mental fuzziness on the simpler tests.

Or there may be an interaction between the stress of taking the more complex test and higher carbon dioxide levels that results in lower scores.

So far, studies have not measured subjects' stress levels or taken other reading that could help explain why carbon dioxide only sometimes affects cognition.

Submarine crews and astronauts are trained to make decisions under stress and make function normally under conditions that would perturb others. 

WHAT WE CAN DO
The question is what is causing this effect, and under what circumstances does it appear, Dr. Wargochi said.

To discern and sum : *There may also be pollutants in indoor air whose most detrimental effects are on the mind rather than the body*.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global operational Research on Air Quality Indoors, Thinking and Students, continues.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

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