Harvard finds certified green buildings improve both thinking and sleep

New research from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that workers in high-performing, green-certified buildings think and sleep better than those in similar buildings that were not green-certified.

Led by Dr. Joe Allen, director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings program, researchers studied 109 workers in 10 buildings in various climate zones across the country for one week. All the buildings were high-performance in terms of having high ventilation rates and low total volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but six were specifically green-certified.

The researchers found that compared to workers in the non-certified buildings, workers in the green-certified buildings had 26 percent higher cognitive function scores, reported 30 percent fewer “sick building” health symptoms, and saw 6.4 percent higher “sleep quality scores” (as measured by wearable sleep monitors)....
https://thinkprogress.org/green-buildings-improve-thinking-and-sleep-29c2d47cc037#.p3z3gi8l4