That type of respirator has no filter on exhaled air. So you will be protected but no one will be protected from you.
I haven’t had mine out in a while. I wonder if you can tape over the exhaust valve. Are there also intake valves?
Also utterly terrifying in appearance.
Except that you don’t even get alien nanite immortality out of the deal, which hardly seems fair.
That’s a useful chart but it still feels pretty weird having an arm of the U.S. government officially endorsing the toothbrush mustache with a friendly green check mark:
If you somehow tape over the exit valve, well that air still needs to get out. It will blow out around the seal between the mask and the face.
I wonder if Hitler’s background as a WWI vet is the surprisingly banal reason that a gas-mask friendly mustache has carved its way into infamy; rather than something less practical?
Yup. I just grabbed mine out of my interim basement office. If you tape over the exit valve it’s just like a fit test and you can’t exhale. Go one step further, and prop open or remove the intake valves, and you can exhale out through the filter. I wonder if 5 year old P100 filters are usable. And exactly how much I want to frighten my neighbors.
How much dead space does that add? Rebeathing your own CO2 is not terribly good for mental functioning.
I’ve been thinking of taping some gauze or something over the output valve, and yes, that would make it even more terrifying.
OTOH, I haven’t left my house/yard in three weeks, and it will be a few more days until I have to, so it’s very unlikely I’m infected at this point, and if I wait three more weeks after my next foray outside before I do it again, that will continue to be the case.
The intake is through the filter cartridges. Not sure if there are one way valves on them.
Only a PATS test will tell for sure, but I’d expect that old filters are better than no filters.
Apparently the style was first made popular in the U.S., and later became a thing in Germany due to visiting Americans.
Folks such as Charlie Chaplin, Oliver Hardy, and a young Walt Disney were all rockin’ that ‘stache before you-know-who ruined it for everybody. And apparently that guy had a much bushier mustache during WWI.
If we want to reclaim that style for non-fascists then we probably need to rename it “the Chaplin,” and also having bowler hats come back into style would help as well.
I just made one of these, sort of. I sewed over the tape between the outer layers to make it a bit neater, and ditched the lower pair of tapes since that seemed pointless (although it might depend how it fits your face; I cut the pattern to fit me so IDK how it would work for other faces).
As far as the choice of materials, it seems like people are talking at cross purposes slightly. For masks that make a seal around your face, the filter material is important. But this kind of mask is not airtight, and less-permeable material means more air flowing around the sides. I mean, you could make it out of leather, but that would just mean whatever air you pulled through it wasn’t filtered at all. (Plus it would make you breathe harder, which is bad).
OTOH, almost anything will block larger-than-aerosol flying snot clods, stop you touching your face, and attenuate fine particles to some degree. So – in the absence of definitive data – it seems like the safest bet is to use the least permeable material that doesn’t make it hard to breathe.
I think you are mistaken.
Citations:
I think what’s most amazing about this chart is that all of these styles have actual names!
A couple of quick thoughts:
Aesthetics for face masks absolutely mean nothing about the effectiveness. As some poster has already mentioned n95’s need to be fit tested to ensure a good seal. A good fitting mask is better than a pretty one.
Not all public health agencies world wide are in agreement with people wearing masks in public although admittedly more groups are recommending them not because the evidence necessarily supports but because of the public outcry about wearing masks.
I am somewhat skeptical on information coming out of the US including the CDC because frankly political interference. Whether its tracking hurricanes or Covid predictions there appears to be manipulation of evidence from science based agencies to support what is coming out of the White House.
PPE is the least effective control and last in the control hierarchy after all other controls are exhausted. If people are sick they should stay home, maintain the 2 m social distancing and practice good hand hygiene. Going out with a mask to cover your sneezes and coughs is not effective at controlling the spread, especially the ones made out of threadbare handkerchiefs as someone suggested.
In China where the use of masks even before Covid has been normal the only thing that effectively stopped the spread was forced social distancing and isolation. Sure you can also argue that the information from China is dubious but take it with a grain of salt.
There is so much speculation on the effectiveness of various material on this thread. How is anyone determining that a mask made out of a t shirt has a N50 rating? This is pure malarkey. My concern is that people will simply don a “mask” if they are symptomatic and go out into public. When the mask becomes saturated and ineffective and people start adjusting or touching it and touching surfaces then the cycle of infection carries on.
Masks may help but it does not eliminate the risk.
Actually, as @j9c posted above in this thread, the smartairfilters people actually DID test different common fabrics for filter efficacy. They rated fabrics a little better than 50%, but they tested for larger particle size than NIOSH’s 0.3 micron test size. I’ve found several reports as low as 5% for cotton and as high as 60% elsewhere.
yes, this is a serious concern, and you are correct - the behavior of wearing a mask must not simply replace the behavior of social distancing and Staying Home. The mask needs to be seen as an adjunct, not a singular action.
But, lest you think facemasks worthless - this report describes a fellow who rode two buses in China. In the first he wore no mask for 2+ hours. On the 2nd he wore a mask bc he felt ill. No one on second bus got ill, but he transmitted the virus to other passengers on the first bus. So when infected people wear a mask, it sure helps.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/irv.12740
Absolutely true but I’ve never heard anyone make the claim that a mask, homemade or otherwise, “eliminates” the risk. All the guidance I’ve seen from the CDC and elsewhere suggests that people maintain the same social distancing efforts whenever possible whether or not they’re wearing a mask. But people do need to go out occasionally to get groceries or whatnot, and even rudimentary face coverings are likely to discourage people from frequently touching their own faces and may help to limit the spread of larger droplets when people cough.
Not to nitpick but the ability to filter down to 0.3 microns is what defines the N95, if you are measuring the effectiveness of fabric to filter larger particles then it isn’t an apples to apples comparison. The ability to filter down 0.3 micron is significant in providing effective protection against bioareosols.
A slightly less attention grabbing mask that still has a cool aesthetic.
This design looks great and fairly simple, but I’m being an idiot and failing to understand the diagram.
In step 2, are you stitching through all four layers of fabric? And then turning it inside-out for step 3?
How close to the fold do you stitch in that step?
At the end, you’re breathing through four layers of fabric, right? Is any air actually getting through that many layers, or is it all out the sides?
Finally, how did you size the pattern before cutting and stitching?
I dunno, I made one per the original design that fits me about as tightly as a real n95 mask. (Or at least the ones from Home Depot.) It has a layer of filter material sewn in (spun polypropylene filter material cut from a vacuum bag) and I do believe that at least the majority of the air I breathe in and out while wearing it is passing through the cloth and filter. I can feel it passing through the cloth with my hand in front of it, and there’s not a lot of obvious blow by around any of the edges.
I do expect that you’d see a lot of variation depending on the fit from person to person though, and I understand your point about a more effective / less permeable filter material resulting in more blow by at the edges.
