Dry eye relief in Detroit, Michigan

In Detroit, dry eyes mostly come from the long heating season and the hours people spend in cars and big work buildings, not from the climate itself. Detroit air is fairly moist outdoors. Keep heat and dash vents off your face, blink fully during screen work and drives, add moisture at home in winter, and use a lubricating drop as its label directs. Ongoing pain or blurry vision calls for an eye doctor.

Detroit’s climate at Metro Airport

The official 1991 to 2020 climate normals for the Detroit area come from NOAA’s station at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus. A few figures from that record shape how southeast Michigan lives:

• Average yearly temperature: 50.6°F.
• January: normal high 32.3°F, normal low 19.2°F.
• Nights at or below freezing: about 120 a year.
• Days when the high stays at freezing or below: about 42.
• Snow: 45 inches in a normal year, led by January at 14 inches and February at 12.5.
• July: normal high of 83.7°F, with roughly 13 days a year reaching 90°F.

Put those together and a typical Detroit household runs its furnace from late October into April. Great Lakes winters are often gray and damp outside, so people don’t connect their scratchy eyes with dry air. The dryness is indoors.

Heated air through a gray Michigan winter

NOAA’s humidity table for Detroit shows January mornings at 80 percent and afternoons at 69. Cloudy, raw days with that kind of outdoor moisture are normal here. Inside, the story flips. Air pulled in at 25 degrees and heated to 70 ends up with a much lower relative humidity, and a forced-air system keeps it circulating across your face all evening.

Some fixes cost nothing: close the register nearest your favorite chair, lower the thermostat a little at night, and keep a ceiling fan off in winter if it blows downward. A bedroom humidifier helps many people wake with more comfortable eyes; our page on whether a humidifier helps dry eyes explains what to look for and how to keep one clean.

Plant floors, warehouses and long shifts

Plenty of Detroiters work in auto assembly plants, parts suppliers, warehouses and hospitals, where the building air never stops moving. Large shops use overhead heaters and big fans, and inspection work means hours of close focus with few full blinks. On the line, try these:

• Wear the safety glasses your job provides; they also block air blowing straight at the eye.
• Stand or set your station so heater and fan outflow passes your shoulder, not your face.
• Use scheduled breaks to look across the floor, away from close work, and blink slowly several times.
• Wash your hands before using a drop, since shop grime and grease on fingertips have no place near the eye.
• Keep the bottle in a locker or lunch bag, away from ovens, presses and anything hot.

The commute on I-94, I-75 and the Lodge

Metro Detroit is a driving region, and freeway time adds up. A winter commute means defrost blasting up the windshield, often straight across the driver’s eyes, while you stare ahead and blink less than usual. Point the vents toward your chest and feet, use the recirculate setting sparingly, and take a full, slow blink at each long red light. Never put a drop in while driving; do it before you leave or after you park.

When the air is driest outside

NOAA’s table gives Detroit its lowest average afternoon humidity, 53 percent, in April, May and July. Spring brings wind off the Detroit River along the Riverwalk and in open lots around the stadiums, and summer brings air conditioning in every office, car and restaurant. Neither season is as long as the heating season, but they explain why some people never get a break from symptoms.

Where Quell fits in a Detroit day

Quell is designed to reinforce the tear film’s oil layer to help reduce moisture loss. The label’s Uses line reads: For use as a protectant against further irritation or to relieve dryness of the eye. Directions are: Apply 1 drop 3 times per day in each eye. For a shift worker, that might mean a drop before clocking in, one at lunch and one after the drive home. Each time, follow the handling line: Do not touch tip of bottle to any surface to avoid contamination.

The carton’s storage line is Store between 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F). A car left in a Dearborn parking lot in January or a hot dashboard in July both fall outside it, so bring the bottle in with you. The label’s “Do not use” line reads: If this product changes color. See the complete Drug Facts panel, including the egg and bird allergy caution, before you start.

Ordering to Detroit and the suburbs

Orders ship from Brentwood, Tennessee, with no account needed at checkout. Shipping is $10.00, and 3 or more bottles ship free. You’ll get a tracking email once it ships, though we can’t promise a delivery date. Refunds on unopened bottles are available within 30 days of delivery, with nothing to mail back. Local details live on the Detroit page and the Michigan page.

Signs to see an eye doctor

If dryness hangs on through spring or comes with pain, light sensitivity or blurred vision, a drop isn’t the answer. Finding the cause, and deciding what to do about it, belongs to an eye doctor. Per the label: Stop use and ask a doctor if you feel eye pain or changes in your vision, if irritation or redness continues, or if the condition worsens or persists for 72 hours.

Our eye symptoms that need a doctor list and the short self-check can help you decide; the self-check is not a diagnosis.