How are dry air and respiratory disease connected? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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When you’re in an environment where the air is dry, a whole cascade of responses renders you more susceptible to respiratory conditions and diseases. That’s according to research by respiratory health expert David Edwards at Johns Hopkins.

Edwards: It's understood that compression of airway epithelial cells is detrimental to airway health but it just wasn't understood that actually just in the act of breathing and breathing particularly dry air that this inflammation can occur. The inflammatory cascade is particularly implicating chronic respiratory disease and two of the immediate consequences are cough and bronchial constriction.   :22

Edwards says this also makes you more infectious to others. 

Edwards: You make the generation of respiratory droplets much easier and so you have much more shedding of respiratory droplets from the airways in dry airways.  :10

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.