Water vapour is always circulating in the air of any room of our house. This water vapour carries with it allergens like dust, pollen, pet dander, smoke particles, and even bacteria and viruses.

Salt is hydrophillic, meaning water loving.it attracts water molecules from the surrounding air. A large block of rock salt, like a Himalayan salt lamp, is especially attractive to water vapour and its accompanying pollutants.

Once attracted to the salt lamp, these microscopic compounds remain on the salt surface and not floating in the air where you can breathe them in.

As Himalayan salt lamps slowly become saturated with water vapour they attract from the air around them, the heat, from the lamp inside or beneath, dries them, thus continuing the hydrophillic effect for as long as the light is on.

This heat also re-releases water vapour back into the air. Importantly, any airborne contaminants attracted to the salt lamp remain trapped there and will not become airborne again.

Occasionally, perhaps every few weeks, it’s good to turn off your salt lamp for an hour, let it cool and then gently rub it with a damp cloth to clean away trapped dust and particles. The rest of the time just leave it on and let it work to clean the air in your room.

Do salt lamps really work to generate negative ions?

This is the biggest question most people usually have when buying Himalayan salt lamps for their reported health benefits.

 

The answer is yes. Salt lamp benefits do include negative ion generation. It appears primarily from the moisture evaporating on the heated rock salt, though the photoelectric effect may also have a role in ion generation. Dr. Albert P. Krueger*, a microbiologist and experimental pathologist at the University of California, found that an astonishingly small quantity of negative ions could kill bacteria and quickly take them out of the air so that they were less likely to infect people. This is particularly useful to patients recovering from burns in particular. (Krueger, A. P. "The Action of Air Ions on Bacteria." Journal of General Physiology. Berkeley: University of California, 1957.)