Open a window for better sleep? Study explores
Photo: Meeko Media/iStockphoto
Lyngby, Denmark — Better work performance could be tied to the air quality in your bedroom while you sleep, a team of Danish researchers has concluded.
The researchers conducted a field intervention of 40 bedrooms in Denmark over a two-week period and tracked participants’ sleep quality via a wearable monitoring device. The participants also kept an electronic log of their daily activities and sleep. Each morning, they underwent a three-minute cognitive-abilities test.
With windows open, 87% of the participants said they experienced deep sleep, compared with 70% of those who slept with their windows closed. The next morning, participants who slept with an open window also performed better on the cognitive test.
| Sign up for Safety+Health's free monthly email newsletters and get the news that's important to you. |
“This suggests that bedrooms should be ventilated with clean outdoor air or supplied with air equivalent to clean outdoor air during the night,” said lead study author Xiaojun Fan, a doctoral student at Technical University of Denmark.
The study was published online in the journal Building and Environment.
Post a comment to this article
Safety+Health welcomes comments that promote respectful dialogue. Please stay on topic. Comments that contain personal attacks, profanity or abusive language – or those aggressively promoting products or services – will be removed. We reserve the right to determine which comments violate our comment policy. (Anonymous comments are welcome; merely skip the “name” field in the comment box. An email address is required but will not be included with your comment.)