It turns out that surgical masks are made of the exact same material as N95s! They both filter 95% of 0.1μm particles.
I very much doubt this claim, and the link you provide in support of it is to a website that you later suggest is being run by people that seem to you “a bit sketchy”. I also doubt that the way you propose for checking the “electrostatic effect” (on large pieces of paper?) can provide strong evidence that the mask’s material provides filtering protection that is similar to a N95 respirator.
[EDIT: sorry, you later cite the Rengasamy et al. paper that seems to support that claim to some extent; I’m not sure how much to update on it.]
As a civilian you can’t purchase an N95 anywhere at any price.
BTW: since presumably surgical masks are not intended to be used in this way, I would also worry about potential risks of breathing too little oxygen or too much carbon dioxide.
BTW2: Maybe it’s worth looking into using your approach for “upgrading” cheap KN95 respirators rather than surgical masks (I suspect that cheap KN95 respirators tend to not seal well due to a lack of nose clip and due to bands that go around the ears rather than around the head). Though the above concern regarding oxygen/carbon dioxide might still apply.
[EDIT: BTW3: for a comparison between cloth masks, surgical masks and N95 respirators see this page on examine.com.]
My understanding is the CO2/O2 thing is almost completely a red herring/non-issue. Firstly of course any mask or filter is going to let through O2 and CO2 molecules completely indiscriminately since they’re far too small to be affected. And secondly you always breathe in some of the air you breathed out, since it’s still in your airways. In the worst case, adding a mask would increase this re-inhaled amount by the volume of the space between the mask and the face, which is pretty small. So breathing through a mask is like breathing through a tube with the same inner volume as the inside-mask space—a regular swimming snorkel results in much more re-breathing, and is also not a problem. It wouldn’t surprise me if some people are re-breathing more without a mask than others do with a mask, just because they have a longer neck or larger airways.
My uneducated concern is that masks that are not intended to seal may not allow air to flow sufficiently easily through their “filter” part (without it turning out to be a problem during “normal” use due the air easily flowing through the edges). Re volume argument, maybe we also need to consider the volume of the air we inhale each time (and whether that volume becomes smaller if something is partially blocking the air flow, and whether we notice).
Thanks for the reply; I too am not expert enough to quantify precisely how effective surgical masks are compared to N95s, I can only look up research articles which seem to suggest that they are roughly similar, to a first degree approximation. I wrote this post because it seemed like an easy-to-follow DIY guide to making a mask brace is a low hanging fruit idea that has obvious benefits but hasn’t been widely disseminated yet.
I think the keyword is “civilian”, in the sense that yes you could technically buy an N95 from the black market after sleuthing around and avoiding counterfeits, but I doubt that this is approachable for the average person. I followed your tip to just google it but every result in the first 2 pages for me was either out of stock or outdated (e.g. a blog from 2018 that hasn’t been updated). This may depend on what region you live in, as availability may be more plentiful in some locales, and my SERP is different from yours.
Thanks for the link to examine.com, I like that the article is both comprehensive and nuanced.
I followed your tip to just google it but every result in the first 2 pages for me was either out of stock or outdated
As I said in that thread, I was not recommending the mentioned google search as a way to buy respirators, and one’s best options (which may include buying from a well-known retailer and having a mechanism to substantially lower risks from counterfeit respirators) may depend on where they live.
Disclaimer: I’m not an expert.
I very much doubt this claim, and the link you provide in support of it is to a website that you later suggest is being run by people that seem to you “a bit sketchy”. I also doubt that the way you propose for checking the “electrostatic effect” (on large pieces of paper?) can provide strong evidence that the mask’s material provides filtering protection that is similar to a N95 respirator.
[EDIT: sorry, you later cite the Rengasamy et al. paper that seems to support that claim to some extent; I’m not sure how much to update on it.]
This claim is false (see this thread).
BTW: since presumably surgical masks are not intended to be used in this way, I would also worry about potential risks of breathing too little oxygen or too much carbon dioxide.
BTW2: Maybe it’s worth looking into using your approach for “upgrading” cheap KN95 respirators rather than surgical masks (I suspect that cheap KN95 respirators tend to not seal well due to a lack of nose clip and due to bands that go around the ears rather than around the head). Though the above concern regarding oxygen/carbon dioxide might still apply.
[EDIT: BTW3: for a comparison between cloth masks, surgical masks and N95 respirators see this page on examine.com.]
My understanding is the CO2/O2 thing is almost completely a red herring/non-issue. Firstly of course any mask or filter is going to let through O2 and CO2 molecules completely indiscriminately since they’re far too small to be affected. And secondly you always breathe in some of the air you breathed out, since it’s still in your airways. In the worst case, adding a mask would increase this re-inhaled amount by the volume of the space between the mask and the face, which is pretty small. So breathing through a mask is like breathing through a tube with the same inner volume as the inside-mask space—a regular swimming snorkel results in much more re-breathing, and is also not a problem. It wouldn’t surprise me if some people are re-breathing more without a mask than others do with a mask, just because they have a longer neck or larger airways.
My uneducated concern is that masks that are not intended to seal may not allow air to flow sufficiently easily through their “filter” part (without it turning out to be a problem during “normal” use due the air easily flowing through the edges). Re volume argument, maybe we also need to consider the volume of the air we inhale each time (and whether that volume becomes smaller if something is partially blocking the air flow, and whether we notice).
Thanks for the reply; I too am not expert enough to quantify precisely how effective surgical masks are compared to N95s, I can only look up research articles which seem to suggest that they are roughly similar, to a first degree approximation. I wrote this post because it seemed like an easy-to-follow DIY guide to making a mask brace is a low hanging fruit idea that has obvious benefits but hasn’t been widely disseminated yet.
I think the keyword is “civilian”, in the sense that yes you could technically buy an N95 from the black market after sleuthing around and avoiding counterfeits, but I doubt that this is approachable for the average person. I followed your tip to just google it but every result in the first 2 pages for me was either out of stock or outdated (e.g. a blog from 2018 that hasn’t been updated). This may depend on what region you live in, as availability may be more plentiful in some locales, and my SERP is different from yours.
Thanks for the link to examine.com, I like that the article is both comprehensive and nuanced.
As I said in that thread, I was not recommending the mentioned google search as a way to buy respirators, and one’s best options (which may include buying from a well-known retailer and having a mechanism to substantially lower risks from counterfeit respirators) may depend on where they live.