I keep seeing photos of people walking around with masks. This is as a result of their fear of the swine flu. Unfortunately, they are often wearing the masks wrong.
A number of years ago, a friend of mine was a designated fit tester for the Portacount and its attachment. This measures how much particles get through masks and is meant to assure that a tight seal is made on masks and SCBA. He asked if I would be his witness when he tested people and assist him with filing the reams of paperwork that was generated. I told him I would. In watching him do this over a hundred times or so, I picked up a few things and I want to pass it on. I was also his guinea pig when he was getting familiar with the machinery. We tested a lot of different surgical masks. They are pictured above. The little silver prongs are what we attached the hose to. They are not part of the masks but were added by me when we tested them.
If you are going to get a mask, make sure it says N95. Anything below this level means that enough germs will get through the mask to make you sick. We were surprised to find that even some of the professionals had problems putting on masks properly and they failed the tests. Mold the mask to your face. Do not have any hair going under the elastics or the silver piece.
Think condoms. If a seal is broken on a condom, those suckers get in and your safety is jeopardized. Do not break any kind of seal.
Once the mask is on, you can move your head to the side and up and down as long as you do so in a smooth and easy fashion. Do not jerk it to the side. If you had to, you could drive somebody to the hospital wearing one of these.
It would be smart to have the sick person wearing a mask too. That way, if they coughed, they'd seal the germs in the mask much better than their hand would. Do not put on a mask if there is risk of vomiting. They can choke to death.
We found that the best mask was made by 3M. It is the one on the bottom and it is numbered 8210. We kept getting good readings with it. The one that looks like a traditional surgical mask failed on us when we had people do the side to side test as it broke the seal and germs got in.
So there you have it.
The swine flu virus is so tiny it will go through a mask.
ReplyDeleteI think it's media over kill but I have a story about SARS. When that happened they brought out these forms at work. Every time we entered the front door, even if we'd gone to the parking lot we had to fill them out declaring that we hadn't gone to China and whether or not we'd been to various hospitals and if so which clinic. I pointed out to them that I wasn't Samantha from Bewitched and I didn't fly to China on my break. Also, I refused the second part. I hadn't been in a hospital, but it's a matter of principle. What if somebody had been to an STD clinic or a chemical dependency unit or something and it's private? Anyways, it wouldn't stop the spread of the disease. I am big on privacy issues. The ironic thing is one guy had gone to China to visit his new mail order bride during the course of the outbreak and they didn't even say anything to him when he came back to work. Go figure.
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