At 11:00 p.m. on a recent Saturday night, I had to call 911 and request EMT help for my wife who was experiencing severe chest pains.  

We arrived at the Hospital ER at approximately 12:45 a.m., after a long wait for a government-managed ambulance.  My wife in the ambulance arrived a few minutes earlier than I did.

I walked into the public ER entrance and took one of the required masks offered from an open-air rack.  It was a thin surgical mask, as I read one person state: “a surgeon’s splash guard.”  Through the rest of the night, I wore that mask whenever I was in the hospital.

Around 4:00 a.m., the nurse rolled a reclining chair into the room so I could attempt to rest.  I tried this for an hour, of course, with the mask on my face.  I observed that the mask created a warm, moist environment through which I sucked in air.  I noted that the moisture level rose over time.  And the mask became moist and warm.

This caused me to wonder: Is the supposed correlation between high vaccination rates in states such as New York and California, and high infection rates valid?  Or is there a relationship between mandatory mask usage and high infection rates?

I began thinking about the physics of breathing.  We suck in air, which includes oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, other gases, water, and microscopic particles including dust, pollutants, bacteria, and viruses.  Some of what we inhale touches the tissue in our lungs.  Our body absorbs oxygen.  Some of the particles touch and stick to the tissue.

Then we exhaust most of it, with a decrease in the concentration of oxygen, and an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide and water.  Most of the microscopic particles are also exhausted.  Some of the particles are now attached to water vapor.  During normal life, our body and its immune system take care of the rest of the particles, pollutants, bacteria, and viruses.  And, we seldom get sick, meaning the bacteria or viruses don’t exist in sufficient concentration in our lungs to overwhelm our system and start growing and multiplying.

Face masks of any type change this natural process.  They all continue to allow the flow of gases.  The most commonly used masks, surgical, cloth, and N95, stop larger particles but do little to stop the flow of microscopically small particles. 

Prior to COVID-19, N95 masks were commonly referred to as dust masks.  They are approved by OSHA to keep wood and metal dust, and large microscopic particles out of our lungs.  They are 95% effective in stopping large microscopic particles.

All masks trap large particles and collect water vapor.  The type of material used and the thickness of that material determines what the mask will trap and for how long it will be effective before the trapped particles and accumulated water prevents the material from trapping more and close enough of the holes that you will have difficulty breathing.

The relatively big holes in cloth masks trap very little other than large particles, and large drops of polluted water when you cough or sneeze.  Surgical masks are untested short-term, large particle barriers. 

N95 masks trap particles for a longer period.  But what do they trap?  They will trap 95% of particles that are 0.3 microns in size or larger.  How large is a micron?  25,400 microns equals 1 inch.  This is a measurement of small things.

What particles are bigger than 0.3 micros?  Many of the common things we call air pollution are larger than 0.3 microns, including mold, pollen, wood and coal smoke, auto emissions, and most dust.  Water vapor is larger than 0.3 microns.  Bacteria are 0.3 microns or larger.  (This is why we have seen photographs from China for years where everyone is wearing a mask.  The Chinese are protecting themselves from extremely high air pollution common in that country.)

What is smaller than 0.3 microns?  Some wood smoke particles.  Some microscopic particles of heavier metals such as lead.  Carbon dioxide molecules are 462 times smaller than 0.3 microns.  Oxygen is 600 times smaller than 0.3 microns.

Viruses can be as small as 0.005 microns.  That is 20 times smaller than what would be trapped by an N95 mask.  The largest virus is 0.3 microns.

When we begin using a mask, the masks start trapping particles, slowly filling the holes in the mask, and reducing our ability to breathe.  Does this mean that there is some point in time where an N95 mask might be trapping viruses?  I would think that is possible.  Certainly, if the virus is attached to water vapor, it would be trapped.

So, a mask would probably protect us from a virus attached to water vapor, for example, carried out of someone’s mouth during a sneeze.  However, airborne viruses can be viewed as the microscopic equivalent of mold spores, which would not be trapped by an N95 mask.

So, what is happening behind the mask?  We breathe in stuff that makes it through the mask.  Some of it settles in our lungs.  Some of it leaves just as it arrived.  Some of it leaves our lungs attached to water vapor.  It arrives in the atmosphere between our face and the mask.  That's a warm and moist place.  Or, it lands on the inside of the mask, again a moist place.  More of the microscopic particles attached to water land on the inside of the mask.  We take another breath, inhaling more airborne virus, and expose it to a high moisture environment, creating more water-captured virus.  Over time, we are developing a warm, moist surface that might encourage the growth of the virus.

Are we raising our own crop of the virus that eventually succeeds in infecting us?

How many people make this worse by saving the mask for use over many days?  How many people place the mask in a Ziplock bag to “keep it clean,” and thus also keep it moist and encourage growth of the virus?

Steve Kieffer is a retired business owner, educated by 74 years of life, with bragging rights to having earned a B.A. and M.B.A. decades in the past.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License