Assessment of indoor environmental quality and occurrence of sick building syndrome in small offices in Penang, Malaysia

Abstract

This study was done to investigate the relationship between indoor environmental quality and prevalence of Sick Building Syndrome in six small offices in Penang Island. Indoor environmental quality measurement was conducted according to relevant standards. There are totally Sixty workers were selected to participate in an electronic questionnaire survey. Questionnaire was used to record the comfort level of respondents in the case studies and level of sick building syndrome faced by respondents. Through indoor environmental quality measurement, it is found that most of the offices facing the lighting and noise problem. The result from the questionnaire shows that in overall, the occupants satisfy with their working environment in term of indoor environmental quality although the result also shows the opinions of occupants on dissatisfaction on certain indoor environmental parameter according to case study. The study also found that most of the occupants feel drowsy and fatigue when they work within the offices. Besides, due to the difference of the indoor environmental quality of the buildings, the occupants are suffered from different symptoms of the sick building syndrome.