By now, most of us must have had more than our dose of coronavirus stories, the latest lethal statistics, and the precautions we can take to avoid infection and prevent transmission of the virus.
Some of the recommendations made by health authorities to avoid coronavirus infection include regularly washing hands with soap and water, or, in areas where there is no ready access to water, to use alcohol-based hand sanitizers; not touching the eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands; covering cough or sneeze with a tissue, and then disposing the tissue in trash; avoiding contact with people who are sick; and remaining at home if you are sick.
Read the recommendations again, if need be, and you will realize that nowhere do they recommend to go about wearing face masks. But, precautionary advice or not, we find masked people everywhere. Do face masks help protect you against coronavirus, should you be rushing out to buy them immediately, and should you be wearing them while out in public? Here are the truths behind the masks.
Let us begin by stating that the face masks you usually see people wearing are totally inadequate to avoid coronavirus infection, or for that matter, any other viral infections. Viruses are way, way smaller than the mask material, and viruses and other microorganisms are easily able to enter and egress through the masks. Most off-the-counter face masks available at shops and coops are designed for specific purposes such as preventing debris, dust and other larger pollutants from entering our nose.
Even a surgical mask provides only limited protection against infection from the virus. So why do we find doctors and other medical personnel wearing them in operating rooms and elsewhere in a hospital environment? Well, believe it or not, doctors and other medical personnel don masks before operations largely to prevent the patient from getting infected by pathogens from their nose or mouth.
Our homes are full of pollutants of different sizes, from pet dander, mold spores and mildew, fumes from paint, chemicals from air fresheners, and much more. Pollutant particles are generally measured in microns (micrometer), with one micron being one-millionth of a meter. To put this size in perspective, there are about 100 microns in the width of a human hair.
Now let us look at the size of some household pollutants. Mold spores and pet dander could range from 3 to 40 microns; dust particles could be anywhere from 0.5 to 100 microns; bacteria are 0.3 to 60 microns. On the other hand, viruses such as coronavirus are only 0.005 to 0.3 microns in size, which is five-one thousandth of a micron.
According to air-filter standards a HEPA filter used in many homes must capture at least 99.97 percent of particles above 0.3 microns, which is much larger than viruses. Even material used for professional medical masks are not small enough to prevent viruses. When doctors are treating patients who have a communicable disease, they wear a type of mask called an N95 respirator. What these masks actually prevent is the droplets of excretions from sneezing or coughing that carry viruses from entering the body.
Because this mask is sealed around the mouth and nose, it will block the droplets carrying viruses. But using N95 respirator requires special training, and it makes breathing harder and it is also uncomfortable to wear for extended periods. When a sick patient wears a respirator, the respirator can be very effective at preventing infectious material from leaving the patient’s body; when worn by healthy individuals, it can prevent infection to an extent, but more importantly it prevents the user from rubbing or touching their mouth or nose, which is a very high risk factor.
The cloth masks commonly used by most people are in fact a hazard to their health, as it could be a source of contamination if they are not discarded after each use. Moreover, they retain moisture and allow various microorganisms to thrive in it and cause infection to the person wearing the same mask repeatedly and thereby annulling the purpose it was meant to serve in the first place.