Health outcome · disease
Dry eye disease
Also: dry eye, dry eye syndrome, keratoconjunctivitis sicca, evaporative dry eye
A disorder of the tear film in which the eye is inadequately wetted, causing dryness, burning, grittiness and fluctuating vision. It is the eye complaint most consistently linked to indoor environments, because the tear film is exposed directly to room air.
Not reviewed by a clinician. This entry describes a disease or a symptom. We are introducing clinical review for pages of this kind; until that reviewer is in place, this page has been written and checked by the Coridum team but not reviewed by a clinician. It is general information and not medical advice. How this library is built is described in How we build this library.
Why it matters indoors
The tear film is a thin layer of water held in place by a lipid surface, and it is the only body surface in continuous, unprotected contact with room air. Anything that speeds its evaporation produces the complaint: low relative humidity, warm air, air movement across the face from a vent or a fan.
Behaviour compounds the environment. Blinking rate falls sharply during concentrated visual work, so the same office air is tolerable while walking about and intolerable at a screen — which is why the condition clusters in exactly the settings where sick building syndrome complaints arise, and why questionnaires struggle to separate the two.
Beyond drying, the air can irritate directly: particles and reactive volatile compounds act on the ocular surface as they act on the airway. Coridum keeps the clinical condition, diagnosed with tear film measurements, separate from reported eye irritation.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Particulate matter (PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀) | RR 1.031 (1.004–1.059) per 10 | outpatients of a megacity · city (ambient) | time-series study of daily outpatient visits for dry eye disease in Guangzhou, 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2020 (2557 days, 27,828 visits), quasi-Poisson generalized linear model with distributed lag non-linear model | F-0073 Cao Association between traffic-related air pollution and risk o… (2025) | machine |
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) | RR 1.059 (1.027–1.092) per 10 | outpatients of a megacity · city (ambient) | time-series study of daily outpatient visits for dry eye disease in Guangzhou, 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2020 (2557 days, 27,828 visits), quasi-Poisson generalized linear model with distributed lag non-linear model | F-0074 Cao Association between traffic-related air pollution and risk o… (2025) | machine |
| Sulfur dioxide (SO₂) | RR 1.174 (1.036–1.330) per 10 | outpatients of a megacity · city (ambient) | time-series study of daily outpatient visits for dry eye disease in Guangzhou, 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2020 (2557 days, 27,828 visits), quasi-Poisson generalized linear model with distributed lag non-linear model | F-0075 Cao Association between traffic-related air pollution and risk o… (2025) | machine |
| — | OR 13.3 | — · office | controlled comparison of two office buildings: occupants of an older building with higher particle counts and microbial colonies compared with occupants of a control building, with dry eye symptoms recorded on entering and leaving | F-1693 Idarraga et al. Relationships Between Short-Term Exposure to an Indoor Envir… (2020) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Identifiers
- MeSH
- D015352
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Dry eye disease. Coridum Knowledge G-0156, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0156/