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by beerandt 1635 days ago
>Surprisingly, wearing an unwashed single layer t-shirt (U-SL-T) mask while breathing yielded a significant increase in measured particle emission rates compared to no mask, increasing to a median of 0.61 particles/s. The rates for some participants (F1 and F4) exceeded 1 particle/s, representing a 384% increase from the median no-mask value.

Double cloth had a higher but not statistically significant increase in particle count (so equivalent to being unmasked) while vented N95s reduced particle surprisingly well.

1 comments

It says single layer cloth there, not double :)

What I did strange is that the cloth masks are mostly stuffier and harder to breathe than the surgical ones, which filter much better.

The FFP ones are of course the worst to use but also the best at filtering.

Either way I can't wait till we can safely get rid of all of them though... I wish there were powered ones with fans to pull in filtered but fresh air. But the only one I've seen is the Razer Hydra and it's always out of stock. It's also huge and looks like a WW2 gas mask so it's not really street smart.

The study included single and double layer; both were an increase vs no mask, but only single was statistically significant.