Air Conditioners and Allergies

The summer heat is on, but we're still suffering terribly from our allergies. And so a lot of us are spending time indoors to escape the heat and the pollen. But are we jumping from the allergy frying pan into the fire? You might be if your air conditioner isn't clean! It’s amazing at how some of the simplest things can cause the biggest problems. But fortunately, the simple things are simple to fix. So if you'’re suffering from terrible allergies, and you haven’t cleaned your air conditioning filter lately, the answer to your health problems might be quite an easy one: clean the filter!

Take Alisa Adler Landau for example: she is really suffering from her allergies, especially this year. So she has a simple solution. “Staying indoors with air conditioning is the best. I just have it on all the time I never shut it off,” says Alisa. And that’s the right idea for someone like her!

Dr. Beth Eve Corn, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, say, “Air conditioning is extremely important for patients with allergy and asthma. We recommend that everyone with allergy and asthma keep their window shut during the pollen season and use air conditioning so that pollens are not coming into someone’s bedroom or into the car we definitely recommend closing the window and using the air conditioner.”

The problem is when the air conditioner isn'’t clean. “You can imagine that an air conditioner the filter is filtering air that is coming into the home, what you’re breathing. So if you have dirty filters are you basically breathing air that is contaminated,” says Dr. Corn.

Now, provided you keep it clean, continuously running the air conditioner can lower the moisture enough to prevent the growth of mold, a common allergen. But running an air conditioner without proper cleaning can contaminate it with mold--another reason why filters on air conditioners should be scrubbed regularly. Harold Wissner, an air conditioning expert, says an occasional detailing job on your unit is best.

“Changing the filter periodically, having the unit checked once a year, to see what condition it is, and when necessary have the machine brought in for cleaning and overhaul, get everything working efficiently again. Otherwise if you don’t do it, the machine looks like this. This is all pollutants and germs which you’re breathing into the system,” says Wissner.

“In my opinion people should be cleaning out their air conditioners meticulously they should be changing their filters at least once or twice a year to make sure they aren'’t exposed to any of the dirt and other things that might accumulate in the filtering system,” adds Dr. Corn. Alisa argues, “It’s not that hard you just open it up clean out the dust and throw it in the garbage.” And with it, her allergies.