Published date: Jun 19 2018

Journal Title: KnE Life Sciences

Issue title: International Conference of Occupational Health and Safety (ICOHS 2017)

Pages: 435–444

DOI: 10.18502/kls.v4i5.2574

E Vidyarinietika.vidyarini@gmail.com

T Maeda

Moderately cold indoor air temperature among offices in hot–humid country caused a sudden change of experienced air temperature when worker went out for a short time and returned to a moderately cold office. Thought that extreme changes of air temperature induced disruption for body thermoregulation and reduced thermal comfort. Current study aimed to investigate thermal comfort and perceived arousal toward mild transient change of air temperature in two actual offices with airconditioning system in Jakarta, Indonesia. Participants in each office were grouped into workers who experienced transient state of temperature (TS) and workers who stayed indoor and experienced only steady-state conditions (SS). Thermal conditions
surrounding 16 transient state participants were recorded at 5-minutes intervals using data logger from 10:00 to 17:00. Transient state participants went out and were exposed to outdoor temperature for approximately 1 hour at lunch time. The difference of mean air temperature between indoor and outdoor reached 8.49∘C and
4.50∘C for office A and B, respectively. Subjective votes indicating thermal sensation, thermal comfort, thermal satisfaction, alertness, freshness, and concentration were obtained from the total of 43 participants. Significant negative correlation found between changes of temperature and thermal sensation, thermal comfort, but not on thermal satisfaction. A tendency of decreased alertness, freshness, and concentration were observed among transient state participants of Office A, but was not observed in steady state participant of Office A and in both subject groups in Office B. These findings suggest that transient change of air temperature would lower arousal level in a more extreme temperature change.

Keywords: transient change temperature, arousal, workplace, subjective vote

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