Our health passes through the humidity in the air. Get into the 40-60% range!
In recent years, spending too much time in closed environments populated by many people, such as offices, supermarkets and stores has caused us to worry. One sneeze was enough to make us wonder: "what if that guy is sick? Could he infect me?’"
With the Covid-19 pandemic, a well-known physical phenomenon has been brought into the public eye, namely, that pathogens emitted by a sick person by sneezing, talking, or breathing remain suspended in the air of the environments they are in.
Less well known, however, was the fact that the ability of airborne diseases to be transmitted is strongly influenced by humidity! In dry environments, in fact, such as interior ones in the winter with heating turned up high, Covid, for example, spreads more easily, as the different pattern of contagion between seasons has demonstrated.
The pandemic thus highlighted a climate factor that we already knew was important to our well-being. How many times have we felt dry eyes, skin or throat, or felt the presence of dust more because of the dryness of the environment's air?
This is all because the human body is designed to live in an environment with a very specific range of relative humidity, between 40 and 60%!
Several mechanisms contribute to the determination of this ideal range:
- the innate immune defenses of the respiratory system function optimally only when the air supplied is not too dry, and such as to block the action of so-called "mucociliary clearance";
- Many viruses have reduced infectiousness for humidity values above 40%;
- the airborne transmissibility of all pathogens depends on the suspension capacity of the droplets to which they are attached. When the air is very dry, droplets shrink in volume, become extremely light, and can hang in suspension for an almost indefinite time;
- Some parts of our body, such as eyes, skin and the upper respiratory system are particularly sensitive to dryness of the air in the environment. Instead, maintaining an adequate range of relative humidity, precisely between 40 and 60%, promotes a feeling of comfort and reduces dust.
For more information on the impact of relative humidity on health, application case studies and CAREL solutions, visit healthcare.carel.com
In this context, CAREL is proud to announce humiFog Multizone Touch, a next-generation high-pressure adiabatic humidification system suitable for any application, whether commercial or industrial or for residential complexes.
humiFog combines CAREL's 40 years of experience in humidification with its historic know-how in electronic controllers, combining mechanical reliability with advanced control logic.
The high maximum capacity of humiFog combined with its multi-zone functionality, which allows up to 12 air-handling units to be supplied simultaneously with a single unit, make it the perfect solution even for complex multi-central plants.
The high-pressure pump operating at 70 bar makes it possible to achieve high flow rates with very low consumption when compared with traditional isothermal humidification solutions, all while meeting the highest hygienic standards suggested by regulations (VDI 6022 certification)
Additionally, the humiFog system can be remotely controlled through a dedicated gateway.
Startup, maintenance, even normal operations can thus be greatly simplified, while all data are made available to the customer on the cloud, thanks to the DigitalHUM portal. This functionality makes humiFog eligible for the tax benefits reserved by Industry 4.0 incentives for connected systems.
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