From: mha23x@gmail.com   
      
   l   
   HEALTH   
      
   Air Pollution Is Making Office Workers Less Productive   
   Tom Y. ChangJoshua Graff ZivinTal GrossMatthew Neidell   
   SEPTEMBER 29, 2016   
       8.95   
    sept16-29-200414451-001   
   Businesses invest a great deal of time and money in interventions that claim   
   to increase workers’ productivity through on-the-job training, new   
   protocols, advice from consultants, and so on. Recent research suggests that   
   there’s a surprising input    
   into productivity that no one ever thinks about: clean air.   
      
   We all know that air pollution is bad for our health, and researchers continue   
   to find evidence of pollution’s negative effects. But recent research has   
   gone further, starting to catalog how pollution might affect our productivity.   
   Several studies have    
   demonstrated that pollution reduces the output of both farm workers and   
   factory workers. When pollution levels — namely outdoor ozone and indoor   
   particulate matter — increase, physical laborers can’t help but slow down.   
      
   But what about the productivity of indoor workers who sit in front of a   
   computer all day? We wanted to know whether those workers were hurt by   
   pollution too. To find out, we investigated the effect of air pollution on   
   call-center workers at Ctrip, China†  
   ™s largest travel agency. Workers at Ctrip are knowledge workers; they spend   
   their day not in a factory or on a farm, but handling customers’ phone   
   calls. If they’re affected by pollution, then we might all be vulnerable.   
      
   Several aspects of the firm’s operations allowed us to credibly isolate the   
   effect of pollution on productivity. First, the firm keeps detailed records on   
   the productivity of each worker: completed calls each day, length of breaks,   
   time logged in.    
   Ctrip has multiple call centers, and all calls are routed through a central   
   system, so overall workflow is not determined by local pollution. And since   
   Ctrip’s clients call them from locations throughout China, we were able to   
   separate out the effects    
   of pollution on worker productivity from the effects of local pollution on the   
   demand for travel services.   
      
   In analyzing Ctrip’s personnel records, we found a surprisingly robust   
   relationship between daily air pollution levels and worker productivity. On   
   average, a 10-unit increase in the Air Quality Index (AQI) led to a 0.35%   
   decline in the number of calls    
   handled by a Ctrip worker. That finding suggests that workers are 5%–6% more   
   productive when air pollution levels are rated as good by the Environmental   
   Protection Agency (AQI of 0–50) versus when they are rated as unhealthy (AQI   
   of 150–200). To    
   our knowledge, our study is the first to document the impact of air pollution   
   on white-collar work.   
      
   What’s more, we found that pollution affected Ctrip workers’ productivity   
   even when pollution levels were relatively low. We found significant   
   productivity effects at pollution levels commonly seen in major metropolitan   
   areas across the United States    
   (100–150 AQI). For example, in 2014 Los Angeles experienced 13 days with AQI   
   greater than 150, and Phoenix experienced 33 such days, with nearly half those   
   days exceeding an AQI of 200. These levels are even more common throughout   
   Europe, where air    
   quality standards are generally more lenient.   
      
   While more work needs to be done to pin down the mechanism at play here, we do   
   know something about how pollution diminishes cognitive function. Particulate   
   matter is small enough to be absorbed into the bloodstream, and even travels   
   along the axons of    
   the olfactory and trigeminal nerves into the central nervous system (CNS),   
   where it can become embedded deep within the brain stem. This, in turn, can   
   cause inflammation of the CNS, cortical stress, and cerebrovascular damage.   
   Greater exposure to fine    
   particles is associated with lower intelligence and diminished performance   
   over a range of cognitive domains. If the negative impact on productivity that   
   we found in our research are the result of diminished cognitive function, it   
   could mean that the    
   negative impact of pollution on productivity may be greatest in higher-skilled   
   jobs.   
      
   All of this might really matter for the economy as a whole. For policy makers,   
   the evidence changes the cost-benefit analysis of environmental regulation and   
   suggests that prioritizing industrial expansion over environmental protection   
   may actually    
   undermine economic growth. Indeed, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation   
   suggests that for Shanghai, air pollution is costing its service sector   
   billions of dollars each year in lost productivity.   
      
   For businesses, this suggests that installing air filters may bring surprising   
   benefits; HEPA air filters can remove much of the pollution that, we’ve   
   shown, hampers productivity. That said, it’s not clear that air filters can   
   completely remove these    
   pollutants. Moreover, while businesses can invest in a good air filtration   
   system, they can’t lower the pollution levels their workers face when they   
   go home. The fact that there is only so much an individual firm can do should   
   not be surprising. The    
   air we breathe is the epitome of a shared resource, and air pollution   
   recognizes no corporate or political boundaries. Therefore, air pollution can   
   only be efficiently controlled by policy that extends beyond the borders of a   
   single firm.   
      
   For everyone else, our findings are a reminder that our own productivity   
   isn’t completely in our control. Instead, it hinges partly on complicated   
   environmental factors like pollution. If your productivity seems a little off   
   one day, the answer might    
   be partly in the air.   
      
   Tom Y. Chang is an Assistant professor of Finance and Business Economics, USC   
   Marshall School of Business.   
   Joshua Graff Zivin is the Associate Dean of the School of Global Policy and   
   Strategy and a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of   
   California, San Diego.   
   Tal Gross is an Assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and   
   Management at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.   
   Matthew Neidell is an Associate professor in the Department of Health Policy   
   and Management at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.   
      
      
      
   https://hbr.org/2016/09/air-pollution-is-making-office-workers-less-productive   
      
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