Steam Inhaler

Details

A closed-chamber steam inhaler with a locking lid, a dry-run cut-off and an earthed three-pin plug. It replaces a bowl of boiling water and a towel, which works and which scalds people every winter. Three things go unsaid in this aisle. The first is the temperature that matters. The water in the chamber is at 100 degrees. What reaches your face is not, because the vapour mixes and expands on the way. A unit that prints nothing at all about mask temperature is asking you to trust a gap it has not measured, and the gap is the entire safety case. Ours is measured at the mask outlet at 45 degrees, plus or minus 2, at a stated ambient, and the figure is in the report. The second is the plug. This is a 220 W mains appliance that boils water inside a plastic body, and a fair number sold here ship with an unearthed two-pin plug. This one is Class I with an earthed three-pin plug and a bonded heater plate, and it is tested to IS 302 for it. The third is what it is. This is not a nebuliser. A nebuliser is a notified medical device that turns a prescribed liquid drug into a respirable aerosol for the lower airway. A steam inhaler warms and moistens the upper airway with plain water vapour, delivers no medicine, and is regulated as a household electrical appliance rather than as a medical device. The two sit side by side on shelves and they are not substitutes.

• Steam at the mask 45 degrees Celsius, plus or minus 2, measured at the outlet at 25 degrees ambient
• About 95 seconds from cold to steam on a full chamber. 60 g of water raised 75 degrees is 18.8 kJ, which is 86 seconds at 220 W if nothing were lost, and about 95 in practice
• Run time about 12 minutes on a 60 ml fill. Measured delivery 3.5 g a minute, so roughly 42 ml reaches the mask, about 10 ml is lost as escaped vapour and condensate on the lid, and the cut-off fires with about 8 ml left. Those three add to 60
• Dry-run cut-off at about 8 ml residual, a bimetallic thermal cut-out on the heater plate at 105 degrees, and a one-shot thermal fuse behind both
• Locking lid. It has to be turned to release, so a child pulling the mask does not tip the chamber
• Chamber is one moulded piece of food-contact polypropylene homopolymer with no internal seams. Polypropylene carries no bisphenol A by chemistry, so BPA free here is a fact about the polymer rather than a formulation choice we made
• Masks are platinum-cured silicone, shore A 40, adult and child, both in the box. Every part that touches water or face comes off and washes
• No fragrance pads, no consumable cartridges and no additives to buy again. Plain water only
• It is not a medical device, it makes no claim to treat anything, and it does not reach the lower airway. What it does is warm and moisten the nose and throat, and whether that helps is a matter of how it feels to you