If you don’t use AC properly you may make lung problems worse, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

People with lung conditions like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, abbreviated COPD, rely on air conditioning in the summer to help keep their symptoms from getting much worse. William Checkley, a lung health expert at Johns Hopkins, says it’s really important to keep your system clean and functioning well, including keeping humidity levels at about 50%, since lower levels can be too drying.

Checkley: It could also lead to coughing, you could lead to nasal congestion it could exacerbate problems in people who have asthma and COPD by drying the respiratory tract out. You make the mucus thicker and more sticky and that prevents the cilia which are the tiny hairs lining the respiratory tract that help to move things out of the lungs and to clear any kind of pathogens or debris so that's also something that is affected.   :27

Checkley says while it’s true that effective air conditioning requires lowering humidity, it’s important it doesn’t get too low. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.