Notícias
The doctoral student Elamara Vieira has an article published in the journal Building and Environment
Titled "The influence of the workplace indoor environmental quality on the incidence of psychological and physical symptoms in intensive care units", the article by doctoral student Elamara Vieira, professor Luiz Bueno and MSc in Production Engineering Erivaldo Lopes was published in the renowned Building and Environment journal.
The present study aimed to investigate the risk of symptomatic complaints resulting from exposure to internal environmental quality variables in ICUs and to determine the risk of exposure caused by the interaction of these variables. Nine ICUs in the city of João Pessoa were selected and, for three consecutive days, temperature, noise, illumination and air quality measurements were collected. Simultaneously, 128 professionals were interviewed to evaluate their perceptions of satisfaction with health and conditions associated with the environment.
The risk of exposure to adverse environmental conditions was estimated using Bayesian networks. The results indicated that the ICUs were within the limits of the hygiene standards foreseen for the sector; the working employees had a 42.2% probability of experiencing physical symptoms associated with environmental discomfort and a 45.3% probability of experiencing psychological symptoms associated with environmental discomfort. The variables with the greatest impact on the health of professionals were temperature variables, which were estimated using the average classification provided by ISO 7730/2005.
The interaction between environmental attributes in a risk scenario indicated that the ambient temperature may affect other environmental variables that affect the health of the professionals. Thus, the risk arising from an uncomfortable environment is not simply the sum of the individual risks for each attribute; rather, it is the result of the synergy between measurable and perceived variables.
