To be honest, some of my colleagues are also “swimming” in this matter. One popular phthisiatrician suggested breathing hot soda solution over a saucepan.
No, brothers, it won't work that way. If you dissolve salt or soda in water, then during boiling this salt or soda will remain in the water. Even when the saucepan has boiled away, almost all the salt will remain at the bottom. If the salt flew away with the water, some salt producers would go broke. This is how they evaporate their brines.
In general, if you sprinkle a salt solution on the stove in the bath, then some of the water droplets, together with the salt, will fly out from there as scalded and dry in the air. This can give off a salt smell, and somewhere on the surfaces, very little salt will settle. Anyway, you can't do inhalation, so don't bother.
Potatoes also do not evaporate from the saucepan, so don't expect to breathe the purest starch over it. If the potatoes evaporated from the borscht, then we would be afraid to remove the lid from the pan. In order not to catch potatoes all over the kitchen afterwards.
What? Yes! Salt drops fly out of the ocean-sea and cover nearby surfaces with salt. But on roads along the sea, usually thick layers of salt do not lie. So you can no longer fantasize on this topic.
And in the halochamber, where salt hangs on the walls, we breathe not evaporated salt, but fallen grains of salt. It's just dust. And yes, it can be mildly helpful for asthma or allergic rhinitis, but not enough for you to notice.
So, brothers, do not bother with steam inhalation. Only water and volatile substances such as alcohol or essential oils evaporate from there.
In any case, steam inhalation is not practiced now. People often sprinkle them on their noses, throats and knees.
Have you tried breathing anything?
