Question from HEG
For the past 5 months there is a faint strange smell all over my office building floor (not the flooring itself but just on our level). Many people don’t smell it at all and of those of us who do smell it we do so to varying degrees. We can’t pinpoint exactly what it is but some of us think it smells like over-heated plastic (which we all know is very toxic). It is intermittent and is often worst in the mornings. We work at a university and have alerted our building managment, operations, and the department of environmental health and safty but no one has been able to identify the source, and most of them can’t even smell it. They looked in the electrical room and in the AC room and did not notice anything obviously problematic. Does anyone have any recommendations regarding what they can check and what we can do? Thank you.
Debra’s Answer
It sounds like something is being used in a room on an intermittent basis, and the odor is getting into the central system and being distributed.
Since it is worse in the mornings, I would probably spend the night in the building. If the smell occurs, it would be easier to track it down when it starts than after the fact.
