How To Keep Your Humidifier Clean (And The Scary Repercussions If You Don’t)

Humidifiers can be beneficial for your health, especially when you’re sick or dealing with dryness in your home. But if you don’t regularly maintain them, they can cause more harm than good.
“If you don’t properly clean out your humidifier, it essentially turns into a gigantic petri dish, which isn’t great for air quality,” said Michael Rubino, a mold and air quality expert and founder of HomeCleanse. “What ends up happening is every time we breathe, which we breathe 20,000 times a day, roughly, we’re going to be inhaling these particles into our bodies.”
We talked to experts about the health repercussions of not cleaning your humidifier and expert-backed tips for properly disinfecting it.
Humidifiers release moisture into the air and can help with allergies, asthma, colds and flu symptoms. They are also particularly useful if your house is dry due to heat or air conditioning. They can relieve nasal dryness, a dry cough and even dry skin or eczema, Dr. Rupam Brar, allergist and immunologist and associate professor of pediatrics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, told HuffPost.
The ideal humidity in the home is between 30-50%. You can measure it with a hygrometer, a thermometer-like gadget that measures moisture in the air, according to Mayo Clinic.
Rubino said that mold and bacteria are the biggest culprits — and the more they are allowed to grow, the more they will rapidly reproduce.
When a humidifier releases air filled with bacteria or mold, it can cause flu-like symptoms and lung diseases, according to Mayo Clinic. If you’re inhaling airborne mold spores, this can trigger allergies and asthma, Brar explained. In rare cases, it can lead to “humidifier lung” or hypersensitivity pneumonitis, an immune system disorder that causes your lungs to become inflamed. This and other serious health repercussions are most likely to occur if someone is immunocompromised.
“We’re learning a lot more about how mold and bacteria can disrupt the gut microbiome and cause things like inflammation, which can lead to … brain fog and chronic fatigue syndrome,” Rubino added. Your immune system can also be weakened from being exposed to too much mold or bacteria, which can cause you to get sick more often.
These expert-backed tips will help prevent mold and bacteria from growing in your humidifier:
Even if your humidifier doesn’t look dirty, it doesn’t mean mold or bacteria isn’t there: “Mold … is 25 to 50 times smaller than what the eye can see … Bacteria is even smaller than mold,” Rubino told HuffPost. If you can see mold in your humidifier, “that means it’s already colonized and there’s already hundreds of thousands if not millions of it present.”
So, what do mold and bacteria look like when you can see it? Rubino said it could come in different colors, such as green, pink, white, grey, blue, red, black, brown or a combination of these. They can be powdery, velvety, fuzzy or slimy in texture. “Pink stuff” is commonly reported in humidifiers when they’re not properly cleaned. This could be a mold (Aureobasidium pullulans) or bacteria (Serratia Marcescens). “Microbial growth can also create a musty, earthy, damp, cigar-like smell when present, so pay attention to this as well,” Rubino advised.
You don’t want to wait until you can see a problem to start regularly cleaning your humidifier.
“There’s a pretty wide breadth of what [mold and bacteria] can actually do to us,” Rubino said. “That’s why it’s so important … to clean appliances like humidifiers that have water or moisture accumulation inside of them.”
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