When the house is heated and sealed against the cold outside, the warm, dry air indoors picks up water from wherever it can, including the mucous membranes of your nose, throat, and lungs. In yielding moisture to the air, your respiratory passages become dried out, and this can set the stage for repeated attacks of croup, nosebleeds, and middle ear infections in small children, and for sinusitis, chronic bronchitis, and asthma in people of any age. By adding water to the air of your home with a vaporizer or humidifier, you can do a lot to eliminate these problems.
Reviewing the various appliances that are on the market for this purpose, the U.S. Pharmacist (7#11:35) clearly favors humidifiers (which produce water droplets) over vaporizers (that produce mist or steam). The latter tend to use more energy, are more likely to cause burns and scalds, and require more attention to be kept working. While both kinds of appliance may harbor molds and bacteria that can be spread with water particles throughout the house, humidifiers are the more likely to become contaminated.
Allergies and infections have been reported in connection with the micro-organisms in humidifiers, but by far the most noticeable problem associated with them is their offensive odor. To prevent this, the U.S. Pharmacist reports, one should add a quarter of a cupful of household chlorine bleach to an appliance that has been nearly filled with water. Because chlorine fumes are hazardous, this procedure should be performed out of doors. After running the appliance with the diluted bleach solution for about one and a half hours, it should be drained and rinsed a couple of times with fresh water before being brought in and returned to use. Repeat this procedure every few weeks to keep your humidifier clean and odor-free. This is more efficient than trying to stop contamination by adding disinfectants or other chemicals to the water. They may smell nice, but they can be quite irritating to the respiratory passages and thereby do more harm than they prevent. None of this applies to the newest humidifiers that work ultrasonically. They, nevertheless, need to be occasionally cleaned.
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