Indoor temperature and humidity in New York City apartments during winter

Abstract

Background Concerns about indoor residential humidity have largely centered on dampness prevention. Overly dry air, however, may favor the survival of some viruses and hence respiratory infections. Many residents employ portable humidifiers to humidify their home environment, yet the effect of these humidifiers on indoor humidity is not known. Methods We monitored indoor temperature and humidity in 34 apartments in New York City during winter 2014–2015. We combined information from the monitors with surveyed information on building, household, and apartment-level factors and with information on household humidifier use. Using multilevel regression models, we investigated the role of these factors on indoor absolute humidity levels during the winter. Results Mean indoor vapor pressure (a measure of absolute humidity) was 6.7mb in the surveyed homes during the winter season. Ownership of a humidifier was not associated with higher indoor humidity levels; however, larger building size (above 100 units) was significantly associated with lower humidity. The presence of a radiator heating system was non-significantly associated with higher humidity. Conclusions The wintertime indoor environment in this sample of New York City apartments is dry. Future research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of portable humidifiers in the home and to clarify the relationship between dry indoor air and the transmission of viral infections.

Correlation of humidity and temperature in conference rooms - preliminary tests

“…In such rooms, the HVAC system has a large impact on the discrepancy, the heating system [29][30][31][32]. However, the authors [9] stated that the heating system does not affect the humidity in the room. Small deviations were probably not considered.…”

“…The internal environment during the experiment -in the winter -just like New York City is dry [9]. The exception is the room with a large number of people.…”

“…They made real measurements and developed a calculation scheme for designers, which considers the humidity with respect to thermal comfort. Measurements in residential buildings in New York were performed by Quinn and Shaman [9], in Poland by Krawczyk [2] and in classrooms by Nejat et al [3]. They noticed that the presence of the heating system had no significant connection with higher or lower humidity.…”

“…They noticed that the presence of the heating system had no significant connection with higher or lower humidity. Appropriate humidity in rooms, especially in rooms where a large number of people are staying at the same time, is important due to the development of microorganisms and ways of their spread [9][10][11][12].…”

“…The influence of humidity on humans is described in publications [1,4,9,[15][16][17][18]. Unfortunately, the simulation tests presented by [1,15,17] were carried out in a climate chamber.…”