Sick Building Syndrome (SBS)

What is SBS?

Sick Building Syndrome (also known as SBS) is a collection of symptoms experienced by a large portion of society that spend the majority of their time indoors. These symptoms include Allergies, Asthma, Fatigue, Headache, respiratory congestion and others. In the late 70's, early 80's there was a series of studies done by NASA tasked to find the solution to developing a sustainable closed ecological life support facility for possible future life in outer space. The main function of the research was not only to create the Oxygen for us to breath, but to clean the air we were breathing from the toxins we release. This research of course explored the use of plants to create and purify air for clean breathing as that was the first piece of information we knew for from the start. As the study went on, they began to find more information on the toxins that were affecting our lives.

Beyond the research through NASA though, many doctors were beginning to associate certain symptoms like allergies and other chronic illnesses with indoor pollutants as early as the 1950's. Dr Randolph was one of the first doctors to make the correlation between how his patients were feeling to the products that were located within their homes.

Currently the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ranks indoor pollution (for both the home and office) as one of the top 5 threats to the health of the general public. As more and more of these synthetic products are brought into our indoor environment(s) the severity of allergic reactions have steadily increased. This has all come about and increasingly continues to get worse as there has been a drastic change over the last few decades in the composition of building materials and furnishing which is playing a major role in a lot of health issues. For example, most buildings that might have before used natural wood products are now instead using fiber wood or pressed wood. Most places will have wall to wall carpeting indoors, as well as the majority of the furniture indoors is being made by synthetic material and being held together by glue's and resins. Those synthetic materials release Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOC's) into the air we breathe.

Learn what Household products bring VOC's into your home