Sick Building

Susan Richardson

The vertical blind subsides to horizontal.
The chairs are too dizzy to swivel.
The dry eye of the desk lamp can’t stop itching
to switch itself off.
A patchy rash of pages rasps
from the printer’s scratchy throat
while the cupboard by the copier is breathlessly congested
with supplies of highlighters
and extra-adhesive post-it notes.
The walls, painted a jaded shade of brain fog,
have forgotten the meaning of ceiling
and the sofa’s reeling
from memory foam loss.

The peace lily is also wilting –
though not from filtering minimal parts per billion
of benzene and xylene,
butanal and acetone,
formaldehyde and styrene
from the inside sky.
No, she’s wilting from the weight of expectation –
that she will unburden the furniture,
engage her root-zone microbes to purge
this workplace of VOCs,
and fulfil the claim on her label
that her presence on a sill or coffee table
will enable us to Grow Our Own Fresh Air.

The Science

The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are off-gassed from such items as furniture, fabrics, carpets, paints, computers and printers are significant sources of poor indoor air quality and they can trigger symptoms of sick-building syndrome, including fatigue, respiratory issues, dizziness and cognitive impairment. A 1989 NASA-led study, ‘Interior Landscape Plants for Indoor Air Pollution Abatement’, offered a vision for cleaner indoor environments by asserting that selected plants and their associated soil micro-organisms were highly effective at removing VOCs from the air. However, the experiments were conducted in sealed chambers under optimal laboratory conditions and subsequent research has indicated that considerable numbers of plants would be needed to effect marginal improvements in home and office settings. Many horticultural retailers nevertheless persist in vastly overplaying individual houseplants’ flair for purifying the air.

The Poet

Susan Richardson is a writer, performer and educator from Wales. Her fourth poetry collection, Words the Turtle Taught Me, emerged from her residency with the Marine Conservation Society and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. Her work of creative nonfiction, Where the Seals Sing, a deep dive into the lives of Atlantic grey seals, is published by William Collins. She has been poet-in-residence with the British Animal Studies Network, facilitated by the University of Strathclyde, and also enjoyed a four-year stint as one of the resident poets on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live.  www.susanrichardsonwriter.co.uk

Next poem: Stirrings in the Hadal Deep by Angela Posada-Swafford