According to a study, air conditioning is regulated for the heat produced by a man’s body. As a result, women are often frozen in the office and the energy bill is skyrocketing.
With the hot weather which has resurfaced for a few days in France, the air conditioning is running at full speed in the offices. So much so that at work, many are used to hearing: “Oh damn, I’m cold now”. And it is often the women who complain. This reluctance could however be explained scientifically, this is in any case what Dutch researchers tried to demonstrate in a study published this Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change (and relayed by the New York Times).
A formula adapted to male physiology
To begin with, the two researchers from the University of Maastricht (Netherlands) indicate that the design of air conditioning units used today was developed on “a model of comfort developed in the 1960s”. The factors then taken into account were logically the temperature and speed of the air, the presence of steam and the insulation of the clothing. But one of the variables in the formula was also taking into account the human metabolism at rest. For this last measurement, it is that of a 40-year-old man weighing 70 kilos which was retained.
As a result, the ideal temperature in the offices was set at 20-21 degrees. However, the “comfortable” temperature for women is rather around 24-25 degrees. With the current rule, air conditioning designers have in fact overestimated women’s ability to produce heat (the index taken into account to regulate the air conditioning) by almost 35%.
An ecological problem is added to it
To explain this choice, scientists indicate that at the time, the company population was mainly made up of men. Which is no longer the case today. Faced with this observation, Boris Kingma and Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt, the two authors of the study, recall the reasons why women produce heat less quickly. “On the one hand, because they are smaller. On the other hand, because they have more fat on the body, the fat producing heat less quickly than the muscles ”.
Finally, an “ecological” problem is added to the sexism of air conditioners. The authors of the study claim that homes and offices generate 30% of carbon dioxide emissions, responsible for global warming. “In many buildings, you notice that the energy consumption is high, because the air conditioning setting is calibrated for the heat production of the men.”
According to Dr Boris Kingma, “if you have a more precise view of the temperature demand of people in the office, you can consume less energy, and therefore have lower CO2 emissions”. Notice also to business leaders anxious to save money, while giving pleasure to their employees …
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