control, and be natural when possible relocating office printers outside the air conditioning boundary, perhaps to another building replacing current office printers with lower emission rate printers identification and removal of products containing harmful ingredients management sbs, as a non specific blanket term, does not have any specific cause or cure. any known cure would be associated with the specific eventual disease that was cause by exposure to known contaminants. in all cases, alleviation consists of removing the affected person from the building associated. bri, on the other hand, utilizes treatment appropriate for the contaminant identified within the building (e.g., antibiotics for legionnaire's disease). in most cases, simply improving the indoor air quality (iaq) of a particular building will attenuate, or even eliminate, the continued exposure to toxins. for the individual, the recovery may be a process involved with targeting the acute symptoms of a specific illness, as in the case of mold toxins. treating various building-related illnesses is vital to the overall understanding of sbs. careful analysis by certified building professionals and medical doctors can help to identify the exact cause of the bri, and help to illustrate a causal path to infection. with this knowledge one can, theoretically, remediate a building of contaminants and rebuild the structure with new materials. office bri may more likely than not be explained by three events: "wide range in the threshold of response in any population (susceptibility), a spectrum of response to any given agent, or variability in exposure within large office buildings." isolating any one of the three aspects of office bri can be a great challenge, which is why those who find themselves with bri should take three steps, history, examinations, and interventions. history describes the action of continually monitoring and recording the health of workers experiencing bri, as well as obtaining records of previous building alterations or related activity. examinations go hand in hand with monitoring employee health. this step is done by physically examining the entire workspace and evaluating possible threats to health status among employees. interventions follow accordingly based on the results of the examination and history report. epidemiology some studies have found that women have higher reports of sbs symptoms than men. it is not entirely clear, however, if this is due to biological, social, or occupational factors. a 2001 study published in the journal indoor air, gathered 1464 office-working participants to increase the scientific understanding of gender differences under the sick building syndrome phenomenon. using questionnaires, ergonomic investigations, building evaluations, as well as physical, biological, and chemical variables, the investigators obtained results that compare with past studies of sbs and gender. the study team found that across most test variables, prevalence rates were different in most areas, but there was also a deep stratification of working conditions between genders as well. for example, men's workplaces tend to be significantly larger and have all-around better job characteristics. secondly, there was a noticeable difference in reporting rates, specifically that women have higher rates of reporting roughly 20% higher than men. this information was similar to that found in previous studies, thus indicating a potential difference in willingness to report. there might be a gender difference in reporting rates of sick building syndrome, because women tend to report more symptoms than men do. along with this, some studies have found that women have a more responsive immune system and are more prone to mucosal dryness and facial erythema. also, women are alleged by some to be more exposed to indoor environmental factors because they have a greater tendency to have clerical jobs, wherein they are exposed to unique office equipment and materials (example: blueprint machines, toner-based printers), whereas men often have jobs based outside of offices. history in the late 1970s, it was noted that nonspecific symptoms were reported by tenants in newly constructed homes, offices, and nurseries. in media it was called "office illness". the term "sick building syndrome" was coined by the who in 1986, when they also estimated that 10–30% of newly built office buildings in the west had indoor air problems. early danish and british studies reported symptoms. poor indoor environments attracted attention. the swedish allergy study (sou 1989:76) designated "sick building" as a cause of the allergy epidemic as was feared. in the 1990s, therefore, extensive research into "sick building" was carried out. various physical and chemical factors in the buildings were examined on a broad front. the problem was highlighted increasingly in media and was described as a "ticking time bomb". many studies were performed in individual buildings. in the 1990s "sick buildings" were contrasted against "healthy buildings". the chemical contents of building materials were highlighted. many building material manufacturers were actively working to gain control of the chemical content and to replace criticized additives. the ventilation industry advocated above all more well-functioning ventilation. others perceived ecological construction, natural materials, and simple techniques as a solution. at the end of the 1990s came an increased distrust of the concept of "sick building". a dissertation at the karolinska institutet in stockholm 1999 questioned the methodology of previous research, and a danish study from 2005 showed these flaws experimentally. it was suggested that sick building syndrome was not really a coherent syndrome and was not a disease to be individually diagnosed, but a collection of as many as to dozen semi related diseases. in 2006 the swedish national board of health and welfare recommended in the medical journal läkartidningen that "sick building syndrome" should not be used as a clinical diagnosis. thereafter, it has become increasingly less common to use terms such as "sick buildings" and "sick building syndrome" in research. however, the concept remains alive in popular culture and is used to designate the set of symptoms related to poor home or work environment engineering. "sick building" is therefore an expression used especially in the context of workplace health. sick building syndrome made a rapid journey from media to courtroom where professional engineers and architects became named defendants and were represented by their respective professional practice insurers. proceedings invariably relied on expert witnesses, medical and technical experts along with building managers, contractors and manufacturers of finishes and furnishings, testifying as to cause and effect. most of these actions resulted in sealed settlement agreements, none of these being dramatic. the insurers needed a defense based upon standards of professional practice to meet a court decision that declared that in a modern, essentially sealed building, the hvac systems must produce breathing air for suitable human consumption. ashrae (american society of heating, refrigeration and air conditioning engineers, currently with over 50,000 international members) undertook the task of codifying its indoor air quality (iaq) standard. ashrae empirical research determined that "acceptability" was a function of outdoor (fresh air) ventilation rate and used carbon dioxide as an accurate measurement of occupant presence and activity. building odors and contaminants would be suitably controlled by this dilution methodology. ashrae codified a level of 1,000 ppm of carbon dioxide and specified the use of widely available sense-and-control equipment to assure compliance. the 1989 issue of ashrae 62.1-1989 published the whys and wherefores and overrode the 1981 requirements that were aimed at a ventilation level of 5,000 ppm of carbon dioxide (the osha workplace limit), federally set to minimize hvac system energy consumption. this apparently ended the sbs epidemic. over time, building materials changed with respect to emissions potential. smoking vanished and dramatic improvements in ambient air quality, coupled with code compliant ventilation and maintenance, per ashrae standards have all contributed to the acceptability of the indoor air environment.