It is a fact that dust doesn’t get off your back no matter how much time you spend. It keeps interfering with your hygiene. However, humidifiers might be the solution. But do humidifiers really help with dust?
Making Indoor Air heavier by emitting moisture in your home, the humidifier helps to wipe out suspended dust particles. It takes away dust from airborne by reducing the level of dust indirectly. If used properly, it can do wonders. It provides the ideal humidity for you to sweep the dust off.
But there’s more to the entire process than just ideal humidity. Reading out this article will help you to effectively remove dust from your housing using the humidifier.
What Is the Composition of Dust?
Dust is everywhere, from your hands to the shelves; it’s an endless trail. Within seconds, your swept floors can be filled with dust. But where does all this dust generate from?
Particles like soil, pollen insects waste enters your house with the aid of different vectors. Later on, these particles collaborate with the dead skin cells, hair, food bits, and paper or clothes fiber that lies around them. As a result, the formation of dust clumps takes place.
Even your humidifier can cause pink mold formation, which has the potential to add to the dust contents. If the surroundings tend to be on the drier side, these molds might turn dry and powdery, eventually contributing to dust!
Luckily there’s nothing to worry about as we already have clear guidelines on pink mold and residue in humidifiers and how to clean it, so you might want to check that out before continuing.
Dust and Health Risks
Believe us when we say dust is not too friendly to humans. It slowly lingers into our mouth, throat, and lungs, causing various diseases. Not only that, the dust has the ability to trigger secondary diseases as well.
Dust Triggers Allergies
Most people dislike dust; however, some people are too sensitive to it physically that every time they come in contact with it, it triggers an allergic response. These allergies can also be categorized as indoor allergies, as it is caused by dust particles commonly found indoors.
There’s continuous sneezing, coughing, red eyes, vasodilation, and even teary eyes.
Moreover, continuous contact with dust is often the cause of life hazards. While it is not possible to control the amount of dust outdoors, it might be possible to keep it toned down indoors.
How Does Dust Affect Focus?
It does not only act as a physical barrier but also as a mental barrier. It might tickle your nostrils or just simply trigger allergic reactions in your body, which highly affects the focus while you work on anything.
Keeping you distracted from concentrating on far more important things will cause problems in your work or even daily chores. Plus, the allergic medicines, creams, and ointments are no less than a headache.
Not Good for Electronics
Apart from humans, dust is also not good for electronic devices. They have the additional benefit of getting in the small nooks and crannies of electrical equipment like keyboards and CPUs.
These can sometimes cause troubles like producing too much heat and even short circuits!
How Do Humidifiers Help with Dust and Workplace Hygiene?
Let’s be honest here, humidifiers are not vacuumed cleaners, they can’t clear off dust directly, but they can help with that indirectly. How?
The Connection Between Humidity and Hygiene
As previously mentioned, humidifiers help to control humidity. Humidity plays a big role in controlling the problems caused by dust.
Without the right humidity, the dust particles might outgrow in quantity, along with being difficult to clean. This situation is certainly more capable of triggering hygiene issues along with allergies.
What a humidifier does here is that it aids you in detecting the humidity of the atmosphere, then you can set it up to the desired humidity.
This desired humidity will deprive the dust particles of the optimum conditions, so, decreasing them in number. Therefore, making you less vulnerable to allergies.
How Humidifiers Aids in Feeling Better?
As we all know that dust leaves your throat and nose feeling irritated and even congested, the water vapor produced by the humidifier can prevent this from happening.
The vapors constantly roam around you and enter your throat, decreasing the dryness of the mucus. A mucus is a slippery substance that protects the tissues from drying out. However, once it dries out, it can cause some discomfort.
Alongside that, the water vapor also enters the nostrils, forcing them to widen a little. As a result, your nose doesn’t feel clogged any longer.
As you can see, water vapor is the main savior here. The more efficiently these vapors are produced, the better you should feel. But before that, understanding what type of water you use in a humidifier is a prerequisite.
How Do Humidifiers Help with Allergies?
The question regarding do humidifiers help with allergies might linger in your mind. But the correlation between the two is fairly easy!
As the amount of dust is reduced, the exposure to dust is also reduced – so the allergic reactions are less triggered.
Humidifiers Make Cleaning Easier!
Let’s get to the magic. When the air is humid, there are more air vapors that can react to the dust particles. These cause the dust particles to agglutinate themselves, forming large clumps of dust.
As the individual number of dust particles has decreased and more dust particles are collected together, it is easier to locate them and use a vacuum cleaner or a sweeper to brush off the dust from your house.
Therefore, it will reduce the daily effort you put into cleaning chores.
Should You Use a Humidifier or Dehumidifier for Dust?
Now that you know the importance of humidifiers and indoor allergies, the next essential thing is choosing the appliance will solely depend upon the humidity and climate of your habitat.
For reference, 40-60% humidity is the ideal range. The question still lingers, humidifier or dehumidifier? Which one to choose?
For instance, if the humidity is less than 40%, then it’s obvious that you will need to increase the humidity. In this case, a humidifier is perfect.
But when it is above 60%, you will need a dehumidifier to decrease the moisture in the air.
But what is the importance of this specific humidity range?
Well, this will not allow the dust particles to make the optimum situation to produce more mists. Moreover, they will not be able to flow freely in the air and interfere with your lifestyle.
When to Use the Humidifier?
Well, keeping the humidifier on throughout the day won’t be budget-friendly for your pocket; we can all agree to that.
So, how will you recognize the correct time for switching it on? We can approach this situation in both technical and non-technical ways.
Use Smart Devices
Firstly, you can take the assistance of the advanced technologies that are available everywhere nowadays. So, if you can’t figure out the humidity of your home, then just use an indoor air quality monitor. This will easily provide you with all the necessary information you need about the humidity.
Just Go with Your Instincts
If that’s not an option for you or seems too much, then you can simply predict the humidity.
If the air feels too heavy or wet, your clothing gives you a wet sensation, mold formation, or water droplets form on your windows; then it might be due to excessive humidity level.
But, if you feel too dry, your hands need constant moisturizing or a too-warm atmosphere, then this simply indicates that the humidity is too low. You should crack up your humidifier.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Which is better, a humidifier or an air purifier?
Air purifiers can decrease the dust level, but the dryness in the air is somewhat constant. A humidifier, in this case, is better as it will also get rid of the dryness.
- Why can’t you put the humidifier on the ground?
When you put your humidifier on the ground, the water vapors will not circulate to the upper area of the room. Therefore, the distribution is uneven. It also decreases the effectiveness of the device.
Conclusion
We hope now, you have developed a clear concept regarding whether humidifiers help with dust. But also keep in mind that, it also demands your efforts. Little efforts like- knowing the right time to switch the humidifier can go a long way.
Although we know now that humidifiers don’t just magically make your dust disappear, they can surely ease up your work. With its help, you will be able to become less vulnerable to allergies and their side effects.
