Why we should warm up our frigid offices

You've arrived to work early to snatch one of the few parking spaces offering shade. Between you and the office waits the Sahara-like plain that brings sticky saturation. You shake the desire to remain in your air-conditioned car and follow the quickest route to the building, which includes a stop beneath a tree.

Walk quickly and risk sweat stains, or trudge patiently through the desert? Either way, when you reach the office doors, you pull out a sweater from your bag: You've entered the Arctic edifice of employment.

The boiling summer and the Siberian office building is familiar to workers -- especially women. Not surprisingly, science now has explained the problem, and it's not just an issue of gender.

A study in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change this week says that temperature settings for most offices are based on a decades-old formula. Comfort standards were set in the 1960s based on the average worker and work environment. In other words, the office was set for a suited 40-year-old man who weighed about 154 pounds.

With employment variables changing since then, and the rise in climate change dialogue, it's time to revisit what's considered "comfortable" in our offices.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the percentage of the workforce that is female has risen from below 40 percent in 1970 to 46.8 percent last year -- an increase of 41.5 million women workers. But more women in office settings has not tweaked the thermostat.

The study found that men, with their higher average muscle mass and metabolic rates, prefer a comfort level of around 71 degrees. That was the approximate level set in the '60s. Women in the office find that a little too cool. Researchers found that women prefer temperatures north of 75 degrees.

Keeping offices cool also leads to higher energy use. "Energy consumption of residential buildings and offices adds up to about 30 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions," the study says. If we brushed the icicles off the thermostat and raised the temperature a little, we'd be helping not only a lot of mothers, but Mother Earth.

An indirect effect of the outdated temperature standard may be that it helps prevent overheating machines and men -- even before women. Computers may like it cool, but according to a 2004 Cornell University study, an office at 71 degrees may lead to more typing mistakes and productivity hiccups for workers than one at a warmer 77.

Many on the Internet have turned the air-conditioning study into a gender debate, but it's a problem everyone has to deal with in the end. No more blankets in the summer, no more stores with frigid air-conditioning and open doors, and no more large-scale energy waste. If you can cook meat in the parking lot and store leftovers by your desk, there's a problem.

Christopher Leelum, a student at Stony Brook University, is an intern with Newsday and amNewYork.