Health outcome · symptom
Headache
Also: headaches, cephalalgia, head pain
Pain in the head, reported by the person who has it. In indoor environment research it is one of the core non-specific symptoms — common, easily recalled, and with so many other causes that it carries weight only through comparison.
Not reviewed by a clinician. This entry describes a disease or a symptom. We are introducing clinical review for pages of this kind; until that reviewer is in place, this page has been written and checked by the Coridum team but not reviewed by a clinician. It is general information and not medical advice. How this library is built is described in How we build this library.
Why it matters indoors
Headache belongs to the group of symptoms that make up the sick building syndrome pattern, and it earns its place because it responds to the building. Studies that raise the ventilation rate in offices and schools, without telling the occupants, find fewer headaches; studies that lower it find more.
One cause must always be excluded first. Headache is the commonest early symptom of carbon monoxide poisoning, and a household in which several people have headaches that ease when they leave the building is a household whose combustion appliances need checking rather than a survey result.
For the rest, interpretation rests on contrast rather than on prevalence. Any population reports headaches; what points at a building is a higher rate in one part of it than another, a rate that follows the working week, or symptoms that clear at weekends and return on Monday.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Formaldehyde (CH₂O) | OR 2.57 (1.11–5.97) | household members (children and adults) · home | cross-sectional study in a population-based sample of 628 households in the United Arab Emirates with passive indoor sampling of SO2, NO2, H2S, HCHO, CO and particulate matter and interviews of 1,590 household members | F-0276 Indoor air pollutants and health in the United Arab Emirates (2012) | machine |
| Candles and incense | OR 1.87 (1.09–3.21) | household members (children and adults) · home | cross-sectional study in a population-based sample of 628 households in the United Arab Emirates with passive indoor sampling of SO2, NO2, H2S, HCHO, CO and particulate matter and interviews of 1,590 household members | F-0277 Indoor air pollutants and health in the United Arab Emirates (2012) | machine |
| Mould | OR 4.2 (1.2–14.8) | children aged 0-13 years in a disadvantaged immigrant population · apartment | cross-sectional observational study of 359 children aged 0-13 years in two disadvantaged immigrant neighbourhoods of Rosengård, Malmö (Sweden), 2010-2011: questionnaire-led interviews and home inspection by health communicators for dampness, mould and pests, logistic regression adjusted for other risk factors | F-0557 Poor housing conditions in association with child health in … (2016) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Identifiers
- MeSH
- D006261
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Headache. Coridum Knowledge G-0166, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0166/