Humidifiers: Are They Helping with Allergies or Just Making Things Worse?

How humid should the air within your home be to ease allergy symptoms? The EPA recommends keeping home humidity between 30% and 50%. If humidity exceeds 60%, the risk of mold and mildew growth increases. Dust mites also thrive in humidity levels of 70% to 80%, which triggers dust mite allergies.

If it’s drier than 30%, it dries out your skin, throat, and nasal passages, which exacerbates allergies. Nose bleeds and chapped lips are more likely in dry air. It also increases the risk of static electricity zaps as you touch things in your home.

Another problem with dry indoor air is that it can exacerbate conditions like asthma, bronchitis, and sinus issues. Premium Allergy knows that keeping your home in the correct humidity range is essential, and home humidifiers are one of the easiest ways to do this.

How a Humidifier Works

There are two main forms of humidifiers: portable and whole-house. Each one of those has different methods for adding humidity. 

Whole-House

Whole-house humidifiers come in one of three forms.

• Bypass: An individual duct system is installed and humidity is distributed through the home, recirculated through the furnace, and sent back into the home. If the furnace is shut off, the humidifier is also turned off.
• Fan-powered: The HVAC system’s blowers move humid air around to the different rooms in your home through the ducts. You can run this system when you want, even if you’ve turned off your heat.
• Steam: A canister heating system is installed to create steam that circulates through your home using ducts or fans in main living areas.

Portable Humidifiers

If your home doesn’t have ducts or you don’t want to invest in a humidifier to work with your HVAC system, portable humidifiers are ideal.

• Evaporative: Water is absorbed into a wick filter that creates water vapor. Fans blow the water vapor out into the room.
• Impeller: A series of disks run continuously to send humidity from the system out into the room. 
• Steam: Water within the machine is heated to create steam. That steam then exits the humidifier and goes into the room.
• Ultrasonic: Vibration creates tiny water droplets that are sent out of the humidifier and into the room.

The Pros and Cons of Using a Humidifier to Ease Allergy Symptoms

Humidifiers offer many benefits that go a long way to keeping you healthy, easing your allergies, and helping your home maintain its value. Among the pros are the following:

• Balanced humidity helps your home feel warmer.
• Bigger energy savings as you don’t need your thermostat as high.
• Fewer problems with health issues like asthma, cracked, dry skin, and sinus infections.
• Less warping and cracking from excessively dry lumber, molding, paint, and floors.
• No more static shocks.
• Reduced medical bills from visits to a doctor for frequent nose bleeds, sinus issues, and asthma attacks.
• Sleep soundly with less snoring.

While that all sounds great, humidifiers also have downsides that people do not think about. The most important is that a humidifier can become a breeding ground for bacteria and mold. The components within a water tank and in the fans are damp 24/7 and that makes them the right environment for bacteria and mold to grow.

If you do not take the time to carefully clean your humidifier as recommended, those contaminants are released through the mist and humidity that enter your home. Your humidifier can make you sick.

You Can’t Overlook Routine Cleaning

Cleaning your humidifier is a daily and weekly task. Each day, you want to rinse out the water tank and add clean water. If the system has a recommended additive, use it. Once a week, you want to add vinegar to your dehumidifier and let that sit. That breaks up any mineral scale. Flush the system with a bleach solution as directed in the owner’s manual.

Make sure you change your filter every month or two. Read what the owner’s manual recommends and change it as often as it says. You should also visually inspect the filter each week to make sure it’s not clogged with slime or mold. If it is, change it sooner.

Another problem with infrequent cleanings is that minerals from the water will build up and restrict flow or create clogs that prevent any water from moving from the tank to the rest of the system. Mineral scale makes your system work harder and eventually stops your dehumidifier from working. 

If you turn on your humidifier and notice the air smells musty or moldy, stop running it. A thorough cleaning is important. You do not want to make your allergies worse by adding mold spores to the rooms without your home.

What Are Your Best Options for Allergy Relief?

Allergies make you feel lousy. When humidity is making your mold/mildew or dust mite allergies flare up, you need better options for reducing allergy symbols. If your air is too dry, your nasal passages are dry and increase inflammation.

An allergy occurs when your body responds to an allergen in an extreme manner. The allergen triggers a histamine response that triggers extreme inflammation. It’s the inflammation in your nose, throat, and sinuses that makes you sneeze, feel congested, and create itchy, watery eyes.

A humidifier is an ideal way to keep your home’s air humid and ease the symptoms you experience with these allergies. If you have a problem with dust mite allergies, make sure the humidity is out of the mites’ comfort zone. You also need to wash things dust mites cling to, such as bedding, curtains, pillows, mattresses, stuffed toys, and carpets.

Mold allergies require careful cleaning of any surface where you see excess moisture, such as a window sill or under a sink. Put on a mask to clean mold with a product designed to kill mold spores. If you want a low-fume option, hydrogen peroxide is a good way to kill mold. 

Once your home is clean and you have the humidity to the proper level, act on easing your allergy symptoms permanently. While over-the-counter antihistamines reduce the inflammation that occurs with allergies, they’re not always as effective as people want. 

See an Allergy Doctor

Instead of spending money on medications that aren’t working, see an allergy doctor for alternative allergy treatments. Immunotherapy is a fantastic way to ease dust mites and mold allergies. Modern allergy treatments help your body slowly develop a healthier reaction to allergens with the help of allergy shots or under-the-tongue drops or meltables. In time, the histamine response that makes you feel uncomfortable eases.

Premium Allergy’s doctor offers permanent solutions to the allergies you experience. From testing to three types of immunotherapy, our team helps you uncover what triggers your allergies and find a way to keep your symptoms from impacting your daily routine.