Cold hard facts about air conditioning and your health

Just cool it with the air conditioning — it makes the heat worse.

That sweet relief that comes from trading the sweltering street for a frosty building may feel great at the moment, but A/C actually works against the human body.

And we’re stuck in this artificial cooling cycle.

“Air conditioning produces a need for more air conditioning,” says environmentalist Stan Cox, author of “Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World.” 

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Cox says that collectively blasting our cooling machines releases about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, along with even more potent hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) that worsen global warming.

This leads to hotter summers — the past six have been the hottest in the last 120 years.

So when we try to beat the heat by cranking up the A/C — chances are we’re just making it even worse.

As it turns out our bodies are impacted by A/C too — it makes those 90-degree days feel even more unbearable.

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The temps we find comfortable vary depending on what we’ve been experiencing. That’s why a 65-degree spring day feels warm enough after a cold winter to shed your coat, but a 65-degree September day after a balmy summer has you digging that jacket out again.

“If we expose our bodies to more warmth, we’ll feel more comfortable at warmer temperatures,” says Cox.

Air conditioning can also make us feel groggy. Cortisol — yes the stress hormone — spikes early in the day to get us up and at ‘em. But a Japanese study that found people who lived, slept and worked in A/C took an extra two hours to see that cortisol wake them up in the morning.

The other health issues coming out of these cooling systems can make you break into a cold sweat.

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Units that have not been cleaned properly or had their filters changed can become breeding grounds for bacteria, black mold and fungi that can make you very sick if they go airborne. The cooling tower in a South Bronx hotel was the source of a deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak last summer that killed 12 people.

That’s an extreme case — but how many of us have suspected the air conditioning in the office of worsening our allergies and asthma, drying our eyes, giving us headaches or making us feel tired and crappy in general? You’re not crazy. Science shows that people working in air conditioned buildings report more symptoms like this than people who don’t. Contaminants in heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems support this “sick building syndrome.”

“People who are working in air conditioned offices tend to go to the doctor more, they have longer hospital stays — they generally seem to have a lower level of health than people who work in naturally ventilated spaces,” said Cox, who will be spilling more cold, hard facts about A/C at the Museum of the City of New York on Thursday.

So what do we do? Those in the suburbs can open more windows to get cross-ventilation going, and plant more trees on their property to provide shade.

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City dwellers might be stuck in boxy office and apartment buildings that can’t be cooled as easily that way, but try cracking windows and switching to fans to cool off when the temps are hot, but not dangerous or extreme.

And after suffering through a couple of sticky days, you should acclimate so that an average summer day is no sweat.

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