Do Masks stop the Coronavirus?

Let us admit: Masks are going to be the new normal. Whether we like it or not, it will become part of our dress for the foreseeable future as we start to return to schools, offices and factories.

There are as many questions about masks as the variety of masks out there. There are DIY masks made at home, the one sewn by grandmas, made with 3-D printers, bandannas, surgical masks, the N95, the ones worn by the construction workers, and many more that I cannot even enumerate.  Which one’s work and for what? Do they protect or not? Protect us or the others around us?

One thing is clear, any type of mouth and nose covering when in public, is essential. “Normally, you think about wearing a mask to protect yourself,” said Mike Bell, deputy director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “That’s not what this is about. It’s about not spraying respiratory secretions and spit into the air around you” he said, as he spoke with the Wall StreetJournal reporter.

Only the tightly fitted N95 or similar types of masks prevent us from inhaling the virus. The virus is extremely small and can easily slip through the chinks and spaces between the ordinary masks and the contours of our face.

Coronavirus resides in the air passages of the infected individuals. When an infected person, even someone who has yet not developed symptoms speaks, coughs or sneezes, the virus is ejected along with the tiny microscopic droplets of the nasal secretions and saliva. The distance traveled depends on the force of the cough or the sneeze and the concentration of the virus in the secretions.

A recent study by David Pui, director of the Center for Filtration Research at the University of Minnesota, was quoted in the WallStreet Journal as follows:

“ a cough or sneeze will launch droplets of mucus or saliva measuring 80 to 300 microns at speeds of 50 miles an hour to 100 miles an hour. A 100-micron particle will sink at a rate of about one foot a second, and in very dry conditions, it will evaporate in around seven seconds—so some droplets might settle to the ground before releasing a virus—but particles less than one micron will float indefinitely. The new coronavirus (COVID-19) measures 0.12 micron. It is extremely small, almost 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. One micron is one-millionth of a meter”.

The following is also quoted directly from the Wall StreetJournal article:

Dr. Pui and his colleague Qisheng Ou tested several materials (not actual masks), and found that five layers of T-shirt fabric or Swiffer dry sheets blocked 60% of particles the size of the coronavirus; five layers of bed sheets blocked 50%; five paper towels blocked 40% and two coffee filters blocked 10%. In addition, they found that three to five layers of a furnace filter made of electrostatically charged polypropylene and polyolefin blocked 98% of the particles”.

It should be noted that as we increase the thickness or layers of the filtering fabric or material to make it a better barrier, it also increases the difficulty of breathing. “If the wearer can’t inhale or exhale through the material and instead pulls air from around the mask’s edges, it could defeat the purpose”, Dr. Pui said.

For all the budding entrepreneurs, here is an opportunity: design a mask that is soft, effective, comfortable, breathable, affordable, one for those with facial hair, perhaps color coded, gender specific, perhaps one with a message or an advertisement printed on it?  Sky is the limit.

Based on the article “Do DIY Masks Help Stop Coronavirus” by Jo Craven McGinty in Wall Street Journal on April 24, 2020.