I worked in a building like this. Over the year I worked in that office, my asthma got gradually worse and worse. I went from using my rescue inhaler maybe once every couple months (for minor cough/discomfort), to using it multiple times per day just to breathe. Inhaled steroids (Advair Diskus) were added to my asthma prescriptions. Eventually I could barely get through the day without prolonged fits of coughing and multiple asthma attacks.

Went to the doctor again, got diagnosed with bronchitis, sent home with prescription cough medicine and even more steroids (prednisone) and was told not to work for at least a week. Got better.

Started coughing again within 30 minutes of entering the building when I went back to work. Then put together that with the fact that I always felt a little better after my lunch breaks to realize it was the building itself making me sick.

We were getting ready to move to a larger office anyway, so got permission to work from home when necessary until the move. We moved offices, my coughing stopped. I discontinued all the steroids and now am back to using my rescue inhaler almost never.

I can't imagine the building had no effect on anyone else, but I definitely got the worst of it. No one else got sick the way I did.

The building itself was a historic building, a Firestone car repair place that had been retro-fitted to be an office. It was built in 1927, and then sat empty since the 1950s, until it was renovated in 2014.