Here's How Air Quality Affects Your Immune System
The human body is mostly comprised of water, but that doesn’t always mean you can count on your workers to keep themselves sufficiently hydrated on their own; the environment itself plays a role. Proper humidity control and temperature maintenance, such as via an evaporative humidifier, can make all the difference between breathing easy and struggling with a not-so-immune system.
By being proactive and implementing an ideal solution customized to suit a specific application, you can benefit from a happier and healthier workforce. Today, let’s explore how air quality affects your immune system.
Aerosols and Airborne Infection Control
As touched on in a previous blog post, all workplaces should have an influenza outbreak management plan that focuses on air quality. Upping the risk can be as easy as allowing the relative humidity (RH) to deviate from 40 to 60 percent.
That said, how do infections spread? Aerosols, droplets rich with infectious bacteria that we humans emit on a constant basis, influence how air quality affects your immune system. In particular, aerosols in low-humidity conditions will travel further due to decreased liquid mass. With fewer airborne health hazards by upping that mass and causing the aerosols to settle more quickly, you and your team will be more capable at limiting the spread of illness if there is an outbreak.
Nobody really likes taking a sick day off work – it means falling behind, losing money and being less efficient than you had planned. If you don’t prioritize airborne infection control with a system such as an evaporative humidifier that can regulate indoor conditions, your team is going to suffer from plenty of sick days. You’ll notice a spike in absenteeism due to their immune systems struggling to fend off more strains of invasive bacteria, with the environment working against them to make recovery difficult. There’s also the risk of developing infections in low or high-humidity areas.
Environments where the air is too “heavy” – in other words, oversaturated with moisture – can be a nightmare for folks with pre-existing lung problems such as asthma. It can be a struggle to breathe correctly in these poor conditions, putting more strain on the lungs and making us more susceptible to developing health issues. Plus, such situations can introduce mold spores and other contagions that are toxic and dangerous. Breathe easy with proper humidity control instead.
We all count on clean, fresh air with as few contaminants as possible to perform at our peak. However, not all of us are fully aware how air quality affects your immune system. Some conditions can wreak havoc on our body’s sickness-fighting capabilities, making us more vulnerable to illness. To learn more tips on airborne infection control or explore our available evaporative humidifiers, reach out to the Condair team.