Sick Building Syndrome

Sick building syndrome (SBS) is the adverse, recurring symptoms that occupants experience during their time spent in a building (Khan & Karuppayil, 2012). Notably, SBS affects 19.4% of office workers (Ooi, Goh, Phoon, Foo, & Yap, 1998). Those affected experience short term ailments such as headaches, nausea, fatigue, and coughing that consequently hinder efficiency and increase absenteeism (Joshi, 2008). A common cause of SBS is the presence of bioaerosols, most notably mold, a form of fungal contamination (Kuske et al., 2006; Schiffman, Wyrick, Gutierrez-Osuna, & Nagle, 2000). However, current contamination detection methods, including mycology, polymerase chain reaction, and chromatography-mass spectrometry, are often time-consuming, expensive, and off-site; as a result, researchers have turned …show more content…
Indeed, electronic noses are instruments that consist of semiconductor gas sensors that respond by changing resistance. The incrementally-different sensors form a sensory array that first responds to a wide variety of chemical classes (odor compounds) when a sample passes over the array (Wilson & Baietto, 2009). The sensory array then sends data to an artificial neural network (ANN) to classify the sample (Mumyakmaz & Karabacak, 2013). The ANN relies on “training” to calibrate the electronic nose by building up pattern recognition based on this data; training consists of sampling several different known classes multiple times such that the ANN records and stores the change in resistances (Wilson & Baietto, 2009). As a result, the ANN uses the data in identifying