The Truth About Humidifiers: Why Most Are Making Your Air Worse
If you’re not deep-cleaning your humidifier every week, it’s probably a bacteria factory. Here’s a better option.
I never thought much about air quality—it felt like one of those “nice to have” concerns, always taking a backseat to more immediate worries. Then COVID hit New York two months before my son was due.
Suddenly, I needed to figure out how to let family visit the baby with minimal risk. That’s when I realized our one (overpriced) air purifier was garbage. (What can I say? I’m a sucker for anything that connects to WiFi and looks like a spaceship.)
After some research, I found that the Coway Airmega was both cheaper and far more effective. Problem solved, right? I wish.
We managed to stay healthy for a long time, even after my son started daycare. Living in an affluent New York suburb probably helped—everyone stayed home, and schools for older kids were shut down for over a year. Personally, I thought that was way too long. The immune system needs exercise, and northern Jersey has been paying for it ever since.
When we finally did get sick, the Coways were still running, but my focus shifted from air purifiers to humidity. Maintaining proper humidity in an entire house without forced-air heating is a nightmare—especially this far north.
After testing a bunch of humidifiers, I realized most of them are disgusting and a pain to clean. Unless you’ve got 20 gallons of distilled water, enough vinegar to fill a bathtub, and half an hour each week to scrub every humidifier in the house, they’re probably doing more harm than good. It takes almost no time for a standard humidifier to get…gross.
This year, I finally found a solution: evaporative humidifiers. They’re not as efficient at pumping out mist as ultrasonic ones, but they’re far less likely to degrade your air quality.
Evaporative humidifiers work by pulling water through a filter and using a fan to push it into the room—nothing fancy. Most people only need to replace the filter once a year. We’ve been using BlueAir InvisibleMist Humidifiers, and they’ve been great. The tank is dishwasher-safe, but because all the water goes through a filter, you can go a long time without cleaning it. It reduces coughing and helps you breathe, just like an ultrasonic humidifier—without making your cold worse if you don’t have time to scrub it down.
In California, air purifiers are a now a must because of all the fires. Got my 2nd Blueair and it is round, looks like a spaceship and connects to WIFI!