The thermostat in your office may be sexist

Science ^ | 8/3/15 | Hanae Armitage

[markomalley]

If you’re constantly bundling up against your office building’s air conditioning, blame Povl Ole Fanger. In the 1960s, this Danish scientist developed a model, still used in many office buildings around the world, which predicts comfortable indoor temperatures for the average worker. The problem? The average office worker in the 1960s was a 40-year-old man sporting a three-piece suit. But fear not, those for whom the “work sweater” has become a mandatory addition to office attire: Researchers say they have built a better model.

The biggest problem with Fanger’s approach—which assumes a 21°C (70° Fahrenheit) office would be the most comfortable—is that it doesn’t take women into account. Men typically have faster metabolisms than women, and thus generate more heat. In addition, women tend to have much stronger vasoconstrictive reactions than men—when they get cold, their blood vessels close faster, and their sensitivity to temperature increases. Cue the work sweater.

It’s not just women who suffer. “When I have to go to conference halls they’re often way too cold,” says Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt, an ecological energeticist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. “It feels like there’s a winter draft blowing. Even in warm temperatures I’ll take a sweater with me if I know I have to attend a meeting.”

So in the new study, Lichtenbelt and Boris Kingma, a human biologist also at Maastricht, decided to update Fanger’s approach. They wanted a model that fosters a thermoneutral zone (not too hot, not too cold) for as many people as possible. That meant incorporating biophysical data on heat production in the body for both genders. They measured average skin temperatures and body temperatures of females in the office and adjusted the metabolic average in the biophysical model to represent a true average for a thermoneutral zone.

The result: a model that suggests office temperatures should be set at a happy medium, about 24°C (75° Fahrenheit), the team reports online today in Nature Climate Change.

Lichtenbelt and Kingma say they hope their work will not only keep everyone comfortable, but also conserve energy in the process. According to the study, residential buildings and offices currently account for 30% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Still, not everyone is going to agree that 24°C is an optimal temperature, notes George Havenith, an environmental physiologist at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom who was not involved with the study. So he proposes a more low-tech solution, which he and his colleagues implement in their own office. “We usually cope by opening windows, or having a fan,” he says. “But mainly, we put on shorts.”

[Bigg Red]

Some dumb women in your office. Sheesh!

[Lx]

I don't think pantyhose is coming back in style for women anytime soon. Cross-dressing men appear to have cornered the market on pantyhose, which might explain why everything in the supermarket is queen size.

Homophobe and transaphobe.

But the women in summer, they get to come to a professional office with short skirts or summer dresses, short sleeve blouses and a pair of light sandals. Must be nice. I would love to come to the office in equivalent men's wear, say a pair of khaki shorts, a t-shirt and boat shoes. But that option simply does not exist for men. At least not in my office. Maybe if I worked for The Gap, I could get away with it.

Misogynist, you're probably a white male and the heat you're complaining about is caused by global warming!

Off to the Reneducation center!

[ThePatriotsFlag]

Some dumb women in your office. Sheesh!

---

No actually pretty bright gals, I hired most of them. Basically, I lied, they believed me. That says something about me, it also says a lot about people achieving what they" believe" is true. (Hope and Change...?)

(when you get up in your seventies, you start to think like this:-)

[vetvetdoug]

I keep the temperature colder at work. There are 11 females and two males. The males own the business. We would keep it colder but the CWI’s would be too prominent.

[Sacajaweau]

If this is anyone's biggest problem....Thank the lord!!

Almost as serious as which way does the toilet roll go??

[Bigg Red]

:)

[BlueLancer]

"Almost as serious as which way does the toilet roll go??"

Over ... OVER!!! If it goes under, I can't find the edge! Keep your &#^!%!% hands off the toilet roll ... I want it OVER! Do you hear me? OVER!!!

8')