ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ISSUES: The Toxicity of the Office Environment

The Office Environment

By Josh Davison

Polyfluorinated Compounds, or PFCs, are commonly exposed in newly renovated offices. These compounds are potentially harmful and can make you radically sick. PFCs are released from new furniture, carpet stain removers, paint, basically everything you can find in an office and have been manufactured for over 50 years. They are linked to cancers, thyroid hormone imbalance, and even infertility.

A recent study of 31 offices in Boston compared to people in the home showed that blood tests of people in these newly furnished offices were 3-5 times higher in PFCs than people who worked from home or did not have much office time. Therefore, the study found that workers in newly renovated building are more at risk for contamination than workers who are in older buildings.

Now you may be asking why exactly they use PFCs. Well, PFCs are chemicals that are mainly used in water repellent coatings that are hoped to make furniture, appliances, and carpets last longer. In case you were wondering, this is that new building and new office smell that may sometimes give you a headache. And yes, it is toxic.

Building managers have been known to try to “bake” this smell out of offices by turning up the heat and ventilation systems in a building before anyone is allowed in to work. While this may get rid of the PFC smell, the PFCs are not that easy to get rid of. They take a very long time to dissipate quickly because they were designed to repel water for long periods of time.

Eventually, somehow, researchers are not quite sure; these PFCs get into the environment as well. There have been surprisingly high concentrations of these chemicals in fish, seals, birds, and even polar bears way up in the arctic. Somehow, these chemicals are breaching even the most remote parts of the world. This is scary, because they do not occur naturally and are a definite man made compound.

So, the next time you are in a building with that new office smell, you should think twice before spending an awful lot of time inside of the area. There just might be toxic chemicals that you are touching and breathing in. However, the bigger problem might be just how these toxic compounds are breaching the environment in the first place.

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