Our aim was to find out if humidification of indoor air can prevent or reduce dryness symptoms or upper respiratory infections in the educational setting and at the workplace.
During the heating period, the humidity of indoor air is low, which can lead to complaints such as dryness of eyes, nose, throat and skin. Furthermore, the dry and irritated mucosa can in turn lead to susceptibility to upper airways infections. These conditions could also be associated with not going to work and to schools. Increasing indoor air humidity by setting up humidifiers might prevent or reduce dryness symptoms or upper respiratory infections.
Studies found:
We included 13 studies with 4551 participants. Seven studies were conducted at the workplace (in hospitals and in offices) and five studies were set in educational settings (kindergarten and schools). The data from one study could not be analysed for the purpose of this review.
Humidification of indoor air versus no humidification
The included studies showed that increasing indoor air humidity by installing humidifiers at the workplaces had no effect, and other studies showed a decrease in symptoms of dryness of the eye, skin and upper airways. However, the certainty of evidence was low to very low.
Regarding non-attendance, the results of the studies (most of them conducted in the educational setting) are also not consistent. The evidence was of very low certainty.
Quality of evidence
We judged the certainty of the evidence to be low to very low, because of limitations in the studies. This means that we cannot be confident of the overall findings.
What do we still need to find out?
We need studies of higher certainty, with accurate definitions and measurement of the symptoms.
Indoor air humidification at the workplace may have little to no effect on dryness symptoms of the eyes, the skin and the URT. Studies investigating illness-related absenteeism from work or school could only be summarised narratively, due to different outcome measures assessed. The evidence suggests that increasing humidification may reduce the absenteeism, but the evidence is very uncertain. Future RCTs involving larger sample sizes, assessing dryness symptoms more technically or rigorously defining absenteeism and controlling for potential confounders are therefore needed to determine whether increasing indoor air humidity can reduce or prevent dryness symptoms of the eyes, the skin, the URT or URT infections at work and in educational settings over time.
Indoor exposure to dry air during heating periods has been associated with dryness and irritation symptoms of the upper respiratory airways and the skin. The irritated or damaged mucous membrane poses an important entry port for pathogens causing respiratory infections.
To determine the effectiveness of interventions that increase indoor air humidity in order to reduce or prevent dryness symptoms of the eyes, the skin and the upper respiratory tract (URT) or URT infections, at work and in educational settings.
The last search for all databases was done in December 2020. We searched Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, CENTRAL (Cochrane Library), PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus and in the field of occupational safety and health: NIOSHTIC-2, HSELINE, CISDOC and the In-house database of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, University of Zurich. We also contacted experts, screened reference lists of included trials, relevant reviews and consulted the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP).
We included controlled studies with a parallel group or cross-over design, quasi-randomised studies, controlled before-and-after and interrupted time-series studies on the effects of indoor air humidification in reducing or preventing dryness symptoms and upper respiratory tract infections as primary outcomes at workplace and in the educational setting. As secondary outcomes we considered perceived air quality, other adverse events, sick leave, task performance, productivity and attendance and costs of the intervention.
Two review authors independently screened titles, abstracts and full texts for eligibility, extracted data and assessed the risks of bias of included studies. We synthesised the evidence for the primary outcomes 'dry eye', 'dry nose', 'dry skin', for the secondary outcome 'absenteeism', as well as for 'perception of stuffiness' as the harm-related measure. We assessed the certainty of evidence using the GRADE system.
We included 13 studies with at least 4551 participants, and extracted the data of 12 studies with at least 4447 participants. Seven studies targeted the occupational setting, with three studies comprising office workers and four hospital staff. Three of them were clustered cross-over studies with 846 participants (one cRCT), one parallel-group controlled trial (2395 participants) and three controlled before-and-after studies with 181 participants. Five studies, all CTs, with at least 1025 participants, addressing the educational setting, were reported between 1963 and 1975, and in 2018. In total, at least 3933 (88%) participants were included in the data analyses.
Due to the lack of information, the results of the risk of bias assessment remained mainly unclear and the assessable risks of bias of included studies were considered as predominantly high.
Primary outcomes in occupational setting:
We found that indoor air humidification at the workplace may have little to no effect on dryness symptoms of the eye and nose (URT). The only cRCT showed a significant decrease in dry eye symptoms among working adults (odds ratio (OR) 0.54, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.37 to 0.79) with a low certainty of the evidence. The only cluster non-randomised cross-over study showed a non-significant positive effect of humidification on dryness nose symptoms (OR 0.87, 95% CI 0.53 to 1.42) with a low certainty of evidence.
We found that indoor air humidification at the workplace may have little and non-significant effect on dryness skin symptoms. The pooled results of two cluster non-RCTs showed a non-significant alleviation of skin dryness following indoor air humidification (OR 0.66, 95% CI 0.33 to 1.32) with a low certainty of evidence. Similarly, the pooled results of two before-after studies yielded no statistically significant result (OR 0.69, 95% CI 0.33 to 1.47) with very low certainty of evidence
No studies reported on the outcome of upper respiratory tract infections.
No studies conducted in educational settings investigated our primary outcomes.
Secondary outcomes in occupational setting:
Perceived stuffiness of the air was increased during the humidification in the two cross-over studies (OR 2.18, 95% CI 1.47 to 3.23); (OR 1.70, 95% CI 1.10 to 2.61) with low certainty of evidence.
Secondary outcomes in educational setting:
Based on different measures and settings of absenteeism, four of the six controlled studies found a reduction in absenteeism following indoor air humidification (OR 0.54, 95% CI 0.45 to 0.65; OR 0.38, 95% CI 0.15 to 0.96; proportion 4.63% versus 5.08%).