From Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, something that might finally explain Al Gore’s behavior – too much time spent indoors and in auditoriums giving pitches about the dangers of CO2. One wonders though what the Navy submarine service has to say about this new research:
We try to keep CO2 levels in our U.S. Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels. – Senate testimony of Dr. William Happer, here
This is backed up by the publication from the National Academies of Science Emergency and Continuous Exposure Guidance Levels for Selected Submarine Contaminants
which documents effects of CO2 at much much higher levels than the medical study, and shows regular safe exposure at these levels…
Data collected on nine nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 3,500 ppm with a range of 0-10,600 ppm, and data collected on 10 nuclear-powered attack submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 4,100 ppm with a range of 300-11,300 ppm (Hagar 2003). – page 46
…but shows no concern at the values of 600-2500 ppm of this medical study from LBNL. I figure if the Navy thinks it is safe for men who have their finger on the nuclear weapons keys, then that is good enough for me.
Elevated Indoor Carbon Dioxide Impairs Decision-Making Performance
Berkeley Lab scientists surprised to find significant adverse effects of CO2 on human decision-making performance.
Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) can significantly impair people’s decision-making performance. The results were unexpected and may have particular implications for schools and other spaces with high occupant density.
“In our field we have always had a dogma that CO2 itself, at the levels we find in buildings, is just not important and doesn’t have any direct impacts on people,” said Berkeley Lab scientist William Fisk, a co-author of the study, which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives online last month. “So these results, which were quite unambiguous, were surprising.” The study was conducted with researchers from State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University.
On nine scales of decision-making performance, test subjects showed significant reductions on six of the scales at CO2 levels of 1,000 parts per million (ppm) and large reductions on seven of the scales at 2,500 ppm. The most dramatic declines in performance, in which subjects were rated as “dysfunctional,” were for taking initiative and thinking strategically. “Previous studies have looked at 10,000 ppm, 20,000 ppm; that’s the level at which scientists thought effects started,” said Berkeley Lab scientist Mark Mendell, also a co-author of the study. “That’s why these findings are so startling.”
Berkeley Lab researchers found that even moderately elevated levels of indoor carbon dioxide resulted in lower scores on six of nine scales of human decision-making performance.
While the results need to be replicated in a larger study, they point to possible economic consequences of pursuing energy efficient buildings without regard to occupants. “As there’s a drive for increasing energy efficiency, there’s a push for making buildings tighter and less expensive to run,” said Mendell. “There’s some risk that, in that process, adverse effects on occupants will be ignored. One way to make sure occupants get the attention they deserve is to point out adverse economic impacts of poor indoor air quality. If people can’t think or perform as well, that could obviously have adverse economic impacts.”
The primary source of indoor CO2 is humans. While typical outdoor concentrations are around 380 ppm, indoor concentrations can go up to several thousand ppm. Higher indoor CO2 concentrations relative to outdoors are due to low rates of ventilation, which are often driven by the need to reduce energy consumption. In the real world, CO2 concentrations in office buildings normally don’t exceed 1,000 ppm, except in meeting rooms, when groups of people gather for extended periods of time.
In classrooms, concentrations frequently exceed 1,000 ppm and occasionally exceed 3,000 ppm. CO2 at these levels has been assumed to indicate poor ventilation, with increased exposure to other indoor pollutants of potential concern, but the CO2 itself at these levels has not been a source of concern. Federal guidelines set a maximum occupational exposure limit at 5,000 ppm as a time-weighted average for an eight-hour workday.
Fisk decided to test the conventional wisdom on indoor CO2 after coming across two small Hungarian studies reporting that exposures between 2,000 and 5,000 ppm may have adverse impacts on some human activities.
Berkeley Lab scientists Mark Mendell (left) and William Fisk
Fisk, Mendell, and their colleagues, including Usha Satish at SUNY Upstate Medical University, assessed CO2 exposure at three concentrations: 600, 1,000 and 2,500 ppm. They recruited 24 participants, mostly college students, who were studied in groups of four in a small office-like chamber for 2.5 hours for each of the three conditions. Ultrapure CO2 was injected into the air supply and mixing was ensured, while all other factors, such as temperature, humidity, and ventilation rate, were kept constant. The sessions for each person took place on a single day, with one-hour breaks between sessions.
Although the sample size was small, the results were unmistakable. “The stronger the effect you have, the fewer subjects you need to see it,” Fisk said. “Our effect was so big, even with a small number of people, it was a very clear effect.”
Another novel aspect of this study was the test used to assess decision-making performance, the Strategic Management Simulation (SMS) test, developed by SUNY. In most studies of how indoor air quality affects people, test subjects are given simple tasks to perform, such as adding a column of numbers or proofreading text. “It’s hard to know how those indicators translate in the real world,” said Fisk. “The SMS measures a higher level of cognitive performance, so I wanted to get that into our field of research.”
Strategic thinking and taking initiative showed the most dramatic declines in performance at 2,500 ppm carbon dioxide concentrations.
The SMS has been used most commonly to assess effects on cognitive function, such as by drugs, pharmaceuticals or brain injury, and as a training tool for executives. The test gives scenarios—for example, you’re the manager of an organization when a crisis hits, what do you do?—and scores participants in nine areas. “It looks at a number of dimensions, such as how proactive you are, how focused you are, or how you search for and use information,” said Fisk. “The test has been validated through other means, and they’ve shown that for executives it is predictive of future income and job level.”
Data from elementary school classrooms has found CO2 concentrations frequently near or above the levels in the Berkeley Lab study. Although their study tested only decision making and not learning, Fisk and Mendell say it is possible that students could be disadvantaged in poorly ventilated classrooms, or in rooms in which a large number of people are gathered to take a test. “We cannot rule out impacts on learning,” their report says.
The next step for the Berkeley Lab researchers is to reproduce and expand upon their findings. “Our first goal is to replicate this study because it’s so important and would have such large implications,” said Fisk. “We need a larger sample and additional tests of human work performance. We also want to include an expert who can assess what’s going on physiologically.”
Until then, they say it’s too early to make any recommendations for office workers or building managers. “Assuming it’s replicated, it has implications for the standards we set for minimum ventilation rates for buildings,” Fisk said. “People who are employers who want to get the most of their workforce would want to pay attention to this.”
Funding for this study was provided by SUNY and the state of New York.
# # #
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
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Given what I’ve learned about the Navy exposure, I think this is just another scare tactic to make CO2 look like an invisible boogeyman.
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Thank-you for that.
Sorry, missed the ref. Must be too much CO₂
Earl Smith says:
October 18, 2012 at 8:01 pm
Didn’t Jimmy Carter serve in submarines?
Proof positive!
As a lawyer who started out by attending medical school for two years, I think I have a better perspective on the merits of this study and also on the rhetoric that surrounds the climate change wars.
The mechanisms of adaption to increased CO2 levels have been well known for decades. The instantaneous response is to breathe more rapidly and deeply, thereby purging CO2. I think it’s fair to say that most of public believes that we breath to get oxygen in. Not so, your respiratory rate at this moment is driven by your need to get CO2 out. Oxygen is so easily absorbed near sea level that it’s a “can’t miss” proposition for anyone with reasonably healthy lungs. If you hold your breath, it’s not the lack of oxygen that eventually makes you give in to breathing. It’s the build up of CO2. More specifically, our bodies closely regulate the pH of blood. Increased CO2 dissolves in water as carbonic acid, lowering the pH. Our bodies are programmed to regulate pH very, very tightly by increasing respiration to raise pH and to slow respiration to lower pH.
Adaption to a lowered pH over a longer time span is regulated by the kidneys. A sustained drop in pH stimulates the kidneys to excrete acid. Mild COPD would be a fatal condition but for the very powerful, but slower adaption to lowered pH that kidneys provide.
So, I think the visceral response of Anthony and the forum to this study is not well justified. The finding is that a sudden and immediate increase to 600, 1000 and 2500 ppm results in a mild impairment of cognition. The methodology is appropriate for the authors’ stated purpose, which is to gauge the effect of walking into a building with chronic, increased CO2 levels. Their findings need to be independently verified, but they do not shock. It has long been known that any deviation from baseline pH affects cognition. There are plausible interpretations of this study that I can make.
The study has nothing to do with the effects of a slow, gradual ramping up of CO2 levels, as in submarines or in the atmosphere. Those changes will be well buffered by the kidneys and would not be expected to show similar results. In fact, I don’t see where the authors have even made an attempt to relate their findings to the mild increases in atmospheric CO2.
My impression is that WUWT was more button down and more to my liking a few years ago. Unfortunately, there is a tendency now to attack anything that moves.
A classic example of going into a study with the outcome already written. Another massive fail,
The study of CO2 in an enclosed room is nothing new. In The Story of Wandering Atoms by M.M.Pattison Muir,Praelector in Chemistry of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, published in 1899, the author who discusses CO2 chemistry and effects, including measurements in English and Scottish country and towns, he points to its value as part of the natural and industrial environment and in connection with CO2 in closed rooms states: “Inasmuch as 100 volumes of the expired breath of human beings contain about 4 1/2 volumes of carbon dioxide, it is evident that the atmosphere of rooms wherein many people are congegated must soon become rich in this poisonous gas, unless some efficient method of ventilation is adopted to remove the carbon dioxide and replace it by fresh air. A school-room, or lecture room, is generally supposed to be efficiently ventilated if the amount of carbon dioxide does not exceed 6 or 8 volumes per 10,000 volumes of air; in very many schoolrooms the quantity of carbon dioxide amounts to 10 volumes per 10,000; it frequently rises to 15 volumes, and in not a few cases to 20, or 25, or even to 35 volumes per 10,000 volumes of air; in some schools in Austria as much as 55 volumes of this gas have been found in 10,000 volumes of the air of the rooms. In some cases, for instance in schools at Aberdeen, Dundee, and Edinburgh, it has been shown that the highest Government grants, per scholar, are earned by those children who attend the best ventilated schools; in the schools at Sheffield, on the other hand, no connexion [sic] could be traced between the ventilation of the schools and the amount of the grants earned.”
So you see, nothing new.
Allan Watt makes a good point (October 17, 2012 4:53 pm). He says ” the disparity of this study’s results and the experience of the Navy is whether people adapt to higher CO2 levels over time” (bold mine). Even in just a few days, the human body and brain have an amazing ability to adapt. The subjects of this experiment appear to have had almost none.
The wheels are coming off “global warming” and “climate change”. But the leaders of the cAGW religion are still entrenched and still well funded. They still run the IPCC railroad and a lot more. They adapt, too. “CO2-is-bad-for-brains” could be a trial balloon for their new war cry.