Posted on 02/18/2021 8:12:04 AM PST by w1n1
As we all know by now, a respirator or mask is most useful for protection when you must be in close quarters with one or more people. That's why they are a must for healthcare workers and it looks like we'll be seeing more mask mandates for the general population. If you have to wear a mask in public, my feeling is it might as well be a good one.
At the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, demand for masks worldwide outstripped production capacity and prices jumped to outrageous levels, prompting many of the handier types, like myself, to some do-it-yourself improvisation. Some DIY was better than others, but any mask was better than no mask at all, even if it was just an old T-shirt tied over your mouth and nose. Unfortunately, most DIY and commercially produced masks, even many N95-rated types, had what appeared to me to be a serious flaw in their fitting that made them seem little better than an old shirt tied across the mouth and nose!
Anybody who has ever worn a facemask over their mouth and nose to do dusty work, like cleaning a chimney or spraying paint, should recall the dirt that collects on your skin on each side of your nose where the facemask doesn't fit tightly against the skin. When you draw a breath, the incoming air moves more easily through these gaps than through the filter material, and it leaves the evidence on your face in the form of ash, paint – or perhaps Covid.
Even with their flawed fit, these masks will do some good, but not as much as one that is well sealed and draws all the incoming air through a filter. Painting respirators seal against the face much better around the nose and ears than surgical masks and offer more protection.
I got the idea to adapt one of my old silicon rubber painting facemask respirators to the job of Covid protection. In fact, this mask would have worked fine for this purpose with its original filters, but those are expensive and I need them for painting because the paint solvents and other chemicals will do me immediate harm if I breathe them in.
TO IMPROVE THE protection of any DIY mask, a doctor friend advised me to repurpose the fabric filter material in a quality household MERV-13 (or higher) HVAC filter. Take apart the filter and remove the fabric from the wire support. Cut out two or three pieces of the appropriate size for your application. Read the rest of DIY Covid-19 mask.
I’ve got one like your first link. I use it as a dust mask. I also have a mask for spray painting that has the charcoal loaded cartridges. I don’t have a covid mask. Wore one once last year for all of 10 minutes.
A surgeon’s mask like the cheap blue things everyone’s using, is meant to keep the surgeon’s spittle out of your opened up body, nothing more.
I gave up my mask for Lent. It’s a religious reason.
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That guarantees you won’t catch China Flu for the rest of your life.
Wait and see...soon they will mandate using a design that chemically passes on a mind numbing complacency drug.
Or...one that targets certain DNA and sterilizes you.
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