Relationship between environmental exposure to chemical, biological and physical agents in bank offices and health status of Italian office workers

The Italian government has mandated environmental monitoring of allergens, irritants and biological contaminants in the work place to ensure that bank and office workers are only exposed to those agents within limits determined by both national and international standards. To assess compliance with these standards and to determine whether there were consistent health effects associated with exposure to these agents at the regulated concentrations, 107 bank offices were monitored for dust, chemical compounds, CO2, biological contaminants, indoor allergens and physical risk from 2003 to 2008. We observed that 9.7% of CO2 samples were over the environmental limit of 1000 μg·m-3. Median concentration of volatile organic compounds (VOC) was 173 μg·m-3, (range 107 ÷ 1155 μg·m-3). There were no measurable health effects associated with these exposures. Illumination and temperature were less consistently in line with regulations with 45% of illumination measurements and 16% of temperature measurements falling outside acceptable standard values. Although ambient lighting was frequently poorly adjusted, health surveillance of 820 Visual Display Unit workers (38.7 ± 9.4 yrs), showed that only 14.5% of workers experienced occupational asthenopia. Concentrations of indoor allergens (house dust mite cockroach and cat, for example) were low overall, with higher concentrations present in the work station (chair) than in the carpet or on the floor. The most frequent health effect observed within the study population was allergic disease, representing almost 50% of the pathologies, which is consistent with observations in other western countries. These data taken together demonstrate that established standards are relatively well adhered to overall and that Italian bank workers experience relatively few health effects that could be associated with the monitored exposures.