A study conducted by a team of researchers in the Netherlands found that air-conditioning and heating standards in most office environments were originally biased towards the resting metabolic rates of men. Rest metabolic rate measures the amount of energy a person uses when resting. The researchers noted that these standards were designed as early as the 1960s to address to a 40-year-old man weighing 154 lbs' resting metabolic rate. This makes it pretty uncomfortable for individuals with different body types, especially female workers.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, eventually recommended stabilizing the thermostats in a level that would make all employees comfortable in the office, while saving money.
The researchers also considered the physique of 16 lightly clothed women who were assigned with light office work tasks in a climate chamber. The chambers were installed with instruments that calculated metabolic rates. The women's oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide release was evaluated. Likewise, their skin temperature and the air temperature and humidity of the chamber were also looked into.
Women were found to have lower metabolic rates compared to a 40-year-old man's, the researchers also found. The reason is that women were generally smaller compared to men and they have more fat cells than men, Boris Kingma, a biophysicist at Maastricht University in the Netherland, explained. Compared to muscle cells, fat cells produce less heat which is why women have lower metabolic rates than men.
The researcher, therefore, believe that it helps to lower the temperature. "The current metabolic standards should be adjusted by including the actual values for females to reduce gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort predictions," the researchers recommended.
They also suggested the need to consider coming up with new heating and cooling standards that should consider employee's average age, sex and body size, although more studies are needed to find out what is the best formula to determine what is the ideal heating level in every workplace.
The researchers also found that workers stationed in colder office spaces are more likely to do mistake than those working in warm ones, a study by Cornell University in 2004 concluded. Kingman noted that working in a warmer space is helping in burning a few calories, given that office employees tend to sit for longer hours.
