{"id":34878,"date":"2024-12-19T16:42:52","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T08:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/?p=34878"},"modified":"2024-12-20T19:06:32","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T11:06:32","slug":"air-purifier-sensor-issues-humidifiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/blog\/air-purifier-sensor-issues-humidifiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does My Air Quality Monitor Show Bad Air When the Humidifier is On?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you turn on a humidifier, you might notice your air quality monitor showing worse readings and running harder. Curious about this, I looked into how humidifiers affect the air particles. Here are two key reasons why this happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Humidity Inflates Air Quality Readings<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The most common air quality monitors work by sensing tiny particles in the air. Here\u2019s the air quality monitor in a Coway air purifier that I took apart.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"air<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

What you\u2019re seeing is a small box with a laser in it. On the other side from the laser is a little sensor that detects how much of the laser light is reaching the sensor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you use a humidifier or take a shower, the air gets more humid. That humidity causes particles to swell and get bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Humidity<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

That\u2019s important for air quality monitors because they detect particles of a certain size and above. For some particle counters, that\u2019s 0.3 microns and above.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"When<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

See how there are a lot of particles just to the left of the red line? When the air gets humid, those particles become just big enough to cross the threshold to be counted.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"When<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

So when you take a shower, your air quality monitor will tell you you have more particles in your air\u2014worse air quality. But you didn\u2019t get more particles in the air. It\u2019s just that some particles became large enough to count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Some Humidifiers Will Put Minerals from the Water into the Air<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Some \u201ccool mist\u201d and ultrasonic humidifiers release minerals from tap water into the air<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Some<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

When researchers tested these kinds of humidifiers with the lungs of mice, they found it caused gene dysregulation<\/a> and other problems. That\u2019s why the US Environmental Protection Agency recommends<\/a> using distilled water, which has no minerals in it. Or you can use types of humidifiers that boil water<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

Bottom Line<\/div>
Bottom Line<\/div>
<\/p>\n

Your humidifier could be causing higher readings because the added humidity is causing particles to swell in size\u00a0and\u00a0because it\u2019s adding minerals to your air. <\/div>

Smart Air<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you turn on a humidifier, you might notice your air quality monitor showing worse readings and running harder. Curious about this, I looked into how humidifiers affect the air particles. Here are two key reasons why this happens. 1. Humidity Inflates Air Quality Readings The most common air quality … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1035,"featured_media":34901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"4153,3745,9154,12643,12607,5638","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[190,169],"tags":[972,278,973,74],"class_list":["post-34878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-purifiers","category-air-quality-monitors","tag-air-purifier-sensor","tag-air-quality","tag-humidifier","tag-pm2-5","resize-featured-image"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1035"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34878"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34908,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34878\/revisions\/34908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}