I don't think you can cleanly compare this: In the study, they added CO2 to the room, while keeping O2 at normoxic levels throughout the experiment. In your meeting room, O2 levels will be dropping in lock-step with the CO2-levels rising. It may be the lack of oxygen that leads to drowsiness, not the additional CO2. But it's the CO2 levels that you can measure as a good proxy of overall air quality.
I don't think this is correct. The concentration of CO2 in air is about 0.04%, whereas the concentration of oxygen is 20%, so the partial pressure of oxygen is about 500x higher. This means that if, for example, 10% of the oxygen in a room spontaneously disappeared, it would be replaced about sqrt(500) = 22x faster through leaks in the room than a 10% spontaneous CO2 increase would dissipate. (This ignores a small effect due to the different density of the two gases).
So in practice the oxygen level can never drift meaningfully far from the atmospheric pressure, whereas carbon dioxide easily can because the pressures involved are so low.
Ok, fair points, including the sister comment, it's likely not a drop in O2 levels.
But then why can we see problems with concentration in studies of people in poorly ventilated rooms, but not replicate that when just adding CO2 to normal air? What is the CO2 that we can measure in meeting rooms actually a proxy for?
The Satish 2012 study that seems to have started this trend was a small cohort of 22 people split in 6 smaller groups where they also just injected pure CO2 in a small room. There have been several attempts to reproduce, which sometimes found no clear effect, or a significantly smaller effect.
This original study has been used to market these CO2 monitors for years, but the evidence is quite thin and doesn't support a strong effect. It seems likely that there is a small effect, and it has been wildly exaggerated thanks to a small study with N=22.
Can it not just be that what happens in stuffy meeting rooms is boring? Opening the windows changes the temperature, the noise levels, perhaps the light levels ≈ adds some novelty, which makes you feel a bit more awake.
I mean that can't be right, as the body's breathing response is triggered by that amount of CO2 buildup. It's not about what's in the air. It's about what the body can take up. Maybe submariners are self-selected to be more physically fit, e.g. larger heart, lung capacity etc. to compensate.
Though that study included a 45 minute acclimation period. Appropriate for submarines, but I wonder what the results would be in the first 1 / 5 / 10 minutes.
One key difference is that submariners are rigorously trained to operate effectively in less-than-ideal environmental conditions, whereas Bob from accounting probably is not.
