Office AC's can make your lungs suffer
Working in a cool, comfortable office sure feels good, but there are facts about centralized air-conditioned offices that could make you catch your breath - literally. Contrary to claims of filtering out impure air, the AC ducts could actually be health hazards themselves, causing a number of air-borne diseases. "Low temperatures in air ducts are conductive to the growth of many fungi and algae, which cause infections", says Dr V. Nageshwar, consultant interventional pulmonologist at Wockhardt Hospital, Hyderabad. Breathing the air circulated through these ducts could make you sicker than you believed possible, because AC maintenance personnel have been known to have cleared out buckets of dust, packs of mould, dead rats and rotting from the ducts! The problem is so widespread that the World Health Organization even coined a term for it Sick building Syndrome, or SBS, meaning buildings where faulty heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, among other fac...