5 Dangers Of Excessive Moisture In Homes
The presence of moisture in a home isn’t abnormal. Every household experiences it daily from cooking, washing, bathing, and the cold weather. However, when the humidity in your home gets excessive, it becomes dangerous.
Most homes experience high moisture levels during wet seasons. Often, this is due to poor ventilation that allows moisture to penetrate through crawl spaces, basements, and walls. There are several dangers that high moisture levels expose you and your home to. These are:
1. Growth Of Mold And Mildew
Excessive moisture provides a conducive environment for mold and mildew to thrive. If there’s high humidity in your home, you’re likely to experience a mold and mildew problem in basements, crawl spaces, corners, ceilings, and other damp spaces. Poor ventilation traps moisture in these hard-to-reach areas, leading to mildew growth. Mold exposure is dangerous to your health. They release allergenic spores that trigger allergic reactions. Touching or inhaling the spores can cause sneezing, red eyes, runny rose, and skin rash.
Prolonged exposure can lead to long-term health conditions such as memory loss, insomnia, confusion, and trouble concentrating. Further, mold exposure can cause depression, numbness in extremities, muscle cramps, hair loss, light sensitivity, and weight gain. Hiring professional mold removal services can go a long way in lowering mold exposure risk. The service provider will assess the mold infestation to determine mold removal cost.
2. Triggers Health Problems
Excessive moisture affects the quality of air in your home, which affects your health directly. In high humidity situations, sweat remains on the skin. High humidity keeps the sweat from evaporating as fast as it ordinarily should. This irritates the skin, making it itchy due to the clogged sweat glands. It also interferes with your body’s natural ability to regulate its temperature.
It can expose you to airborne irritants like dust mites and mold that thrive in high-moisture environments if you’re asthmatic. You may experience difficulty breathing in a humid environment when the moisture content in the air is high due to increased airway resistance. In such situations, airway constriction and coughing occur in people with mild asthma. Even people with no underlying conditions can experience breathing difficulties, poor concentration, and faintness if they spend time in a home with excessive moisture.
3. Attracts Bug Infestation
Excessive moisture can make your home attractive to bugs and other pests that thrive in warm, humid environments. Although they’re not found in damp areas, bed bugs thrive in homes that have high moisture. Humidity creates a perfect environment where they can survive for up to five months without feeding. Other pests that are likely to invade your home with excessive moisture include termites, roaches, and ants. Invasion of these pests in your home can cause discomfort due to bites. Cockroaches can spread pathogens in your home that expose you to a wide range of diseases, including nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, cholera, typhoid fever, plague, and salmonellosis.
4. Damages Wooden Structures
Another danger that excessive moisture exposes your home to is damage to wooden structures. Although it’s a typical decoration and construction material, wood can be damaged easily if exposed to high humidity levels. If your home has wooden furniture, structures, or floors, excessive moisture can cause swelling on the surfaces, effectively deforming them. In worse situations, prolonged exposure to extreme humidity causes wood to rot from fungi attacks that wreck it.
5. Damages Electronic Appliances
In homes with excess moisture, electronic appliances are at risk of getting damaged. High humidity damages the internal components of electronic appliances like televisions, microwaves, among others, causing them to malfunction. Moisture lowers insulation resistance and corrodes contacts that facilitate the operation of those electronic appliances. Often, the damage occurs when condensation forms in the electronic components, forming rust and corrosion.
Final Thoughts
Excessive moisture lowers the quality of air in a household. Maintaining good air quality within the home is critical in reducing exposure to health problems for those living in the house. High humidity is not just dangerous for people; it’s also harmful to the structure of the home and the electronics therein.
The gas particles that make the home humid create a conducive environment for mold and mildew to thrive. The spores produced by mold are dangerous as they pose health risks for the people living in the home. It also attracts home pests like bugs and roaches that pose health risks to people. If you’re in a region with high humidity, you can reduce the dangers of excessive moisture by installing dehumidifiers in your home.
