Allergies suddenly better in office building. Why?

I normally suffer from terrible allergies. Yesterday, I went to wait for a specialist's appointment in an office building attached to the local hospital for about two hours. During that time, for the first time in years, my allergies totally left me. So did my asthma and headache symptoms. I really felt amazing.
As soon as I left, they came back.
Out of interest, I went back to the same building today for a couple of hours - and the same thing happened! I felt great after about 30 minutes in the building.

What is so special about this building?
I have a very clean newly renovated house with a $1000 air purifier, whereas the office building has carpeting, which usually sets off my allergies.
I've lived in many different houses in different states and countries... but my symptoms have always remained constant.

I can't make any sense of it. Does anyone have any ideas?

Hmm the only thing I can think of maybe they have even a bigger, badder and better filter/purifier?? :)

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I have the best purifier in the world - the IQAir. Fat lot of good it did me, though :)

Maybe you can see if this building will lease you a "safe" room? :) Just kidding. I honestly don't know why that this building will ease your allergies. I sometimes notice too that when I go into certain areas, that it will make my allergies either worse or better but I never really paid that much attention to the "why's" of it.

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lol. yeah, just move in to the hospital. i'm going to call them tomorrow and see if I can talk to the person who manages the building and environmental systems

Well hey if you do call them, please come back and tell me (us) because now my curiousity is peaked! :)

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my friend wrote:
That's really interesting my man. Only a few things spring to mind:
1) filtered air con (you mentioned that before. Might be better than
your purifier because it filters all the air that enters that area
(the purifier gets a mix of air into the room i guess (and maybe the
air con humidifies?)
2) Frequent cleaning - i think hospitals are cleaned every day
3) Hospital grade detergents - anti bacterial anti fungal, or maybe
its just the chemicals alone that make you feel better??
4) Elevation? Was it just the 8th floor you felt better? Maybe most
pollens and dusts don't carry up that high.


I wrote:
Right... those were the things I was thinking too... still, it didn't fully explain it.

1 - my filter is pretty darned good - and I've done experiments where I've cleaned my room spotless, sprayed the allersearch pollen, dustmite and mould killer till the bottle was empty. and run the purifier on full speed for 12 hours... Nothing.
whereas in the hospital I start feeling better within half an hour.

2 - maybe, but a lot of places are clean

3 - hmmm... could be. but how would cleaning chemicals make one feel better?

4 - the WHO did a study a few years ago on that - vertical allergy response or something - and found that the higher floor you're on the worse allergies you're going to get. they rise up apparently.


there's one interesting point that a woman on an allergy forum pointed out (they're very interested about it too) - that they never open the windows (you can't open them) and you have to take an elevator up to the floor. So there's essentially no air coming in except through the air con system (with filter I'm guessing)... So i'm guessing that there's really no way for pollen to get in, except on people's clothes. It's sort of like having an airlock in a spaceship.
They say pollen sits around for weeks or months (i'm not sure) indoors if it's not cleaned away. so, even if I cleaned my room and ran the purifier, I would have to do that every day and almost never open my window or door for weeks before I would start to notice the same effect.
I imagine the pollen and stuff like icing sugar that blows in and lands everywhere till it's cleaned up. or like that red dust storm ... we've still got that dust in different parts of the house.
a building like that that's never had windows open and has this kind of airlock entry system - would be one of the few places with none of the icing sugar laying around.

I want to go and spend some time in a laboratory clean room or something... I"m trying to imagine other places that would have the same effect.

It's so weird - I really felt great hanging out there. Yesterday I spent hours really enjoying it. I even went in today, but they'd shut it off for the weekend. I went over to the hospital and hung out on the first floor for an hour, but it just wasn't the same.