How does air humidity affect your health?
Dry skin? Vascular problems? Cracked lips? Constant allergies and asthmatic children? Possibly, the humidity level in your home is far from optimal
The key point with air humidity, as well as with radiation, is that humans do not have a specific sensory organ capable of perceiving this crucial health indicator.
We are very sensitive to temperature, but when it comes to humidity, we can only judge by indirect signs:
- Dry skin, dry eyes, cracks on the lips, frequent colds, discomfort when wearing contact lenses, asthmatic children — all these are indirect evidence that the humidity in the air at home is below normal, and your skin and mucous membranes are losing moisture too quickly through evaporation.
- Feeling of stuffiness, increased sweating, constant skin irritations, and vascular problems — possibly the humidity in your home is too high.
Allergies are a separate issue. Both low and high air humidity are bad for allergy sufferers. In the first case, attacks are triggered by dry air, and as a result, household dust, which can linger in the air for hours, in the second case — mold spores and other microflora, which thrive in a humid and warm living space.
What are the mechanisms of humidity affecting health?
Put simply:
- Low humidity dries out your mucous membranes, and the drier they are, the harder it is for them to resist external infections. This leads to colds, viruses, and local inflammations.
- High humidity promotes the growth of household fungi and mold, whose spores are generally not beneficial to health. Additionally, when the temperature is high, sweat does not evaporate well from the skin, increasing perspiration and overloading the cardiovascular system. Plus, overheating.
Do not try to diagnose yourself based on humidity alone. Otherwise, you are likely to end up in a situation similar to an old joke, where the character discovers all the diseases he reads about in a medical encyclopedia. The right approach — buy a home humidity monitor, observe its readings for a week or two (and carefully record everything), and then discuss the results with a doctor.
What is considered optimal humidity?
For most people, paper books, paintings, wooden furniture, musical instruments, the optimal humidity ranges from 40% to 60%. Here and further, we are talking about relative humidity
BUT! In practice, air humidity is a very individual concept. Some people are comfortable at 30%, while for others, even 60% would be too dry. Unfortunately, understanding comes only through trial and error in each specific case.
Read about what affects indoor air humidity in the article: “Why Heaters and Air Conditioners ’Dry Out’ the Air”.
