While speaking at a press briefing, Health Ministry Joint Secretary, Lav Agarwal said, "As per a study, in India, 50 percent of the people still do not wear masks. " Among those who wear masks, 64 percent of them do not cover their nose properly." (“Study shows 50% people still do not wear masks: Health ...”) 20 per cent have it on their chins, 2 per cent have masks on their neck and only 14 per cent of them wear it correctly by covering nose, mouth, chin and with a clip on the nose”, he added. This isn’t good. We know why.
Facial masks need to cover nose, mouth and chin with no gap. This is the proper way to wear a mask. But many people complain about breathlessness, uneasiness, headache while wearing a mask. There has been a study on the physiological and psychological impact of wearing face masks. Studies have shown that there may be a small increase in breathing resistance while wearing a mask, but it does not seem to significantly impact respiration. The next question is does it impact oxygen delivery inside the body the much-touted Oxygen saturation. That has also been proven to be too minimal to be of significance. Which means yes there are changes but they are not alarming to cause health concerns. Of course, masks are not recommended for individuals with pulmonary or cardiac diseases or those in need of oxygen supplementation. Then why do people find it uncomfortable? Perception may be the reason.
Human behavior is a result of our perceptions. Psychological needs may be at the heart of mask-wearing attitudes and compliance notes the study. Autonomy,the ability to have free will and choice over one’s actions,is a basic psychological need. Here your autonomy to make your choice is lost as the situation forces you to wear a mask. This results in frustration, non-compliance etc. even though we very well know the risk. We often perceive breathlessness, sickness etc. owing to mask use. Shouldn’t we be aware of this to choose wisely?
Next question is to choose what to wear?
A recent study by a group of researchers at Yale, Stanford and other organizations worked on capturing the mask wearing attributes and challenges in Bangladesh. The group worked on 341,830 adults in 600 villages. Apart from studying promoting mask wearing habits,the study also revealed about the efficiency of the different types of masks. It has shown that three ply surgical masks are the best bet in terms of convenience, safety, cost, maintenance and availability.
Surgical masks have a 95% filtration efficiency while cloth masks have only 37% efficiency.This is a hugegap,isn’tit? And I have good news too. They tried washing the surgical masks and it worked even for 10 washes with a 76% efficiency.
Let us see how the thin flexible mask is structured. Surgical masks are composed of three layers; the outer hydrophobic coating repels liquids (e.g., blood and respiratory droplets),the middle layer filters particles larger than two micrometers,and the third hydrophilic layer absorbs the liquids and moisture inside the mask.
Now you know why and how to wear a mask. So, what are you waiting for?
References:
https://sites.kowsarpub.com/ijhls/articles/109729.html
"Barati F , Hosseini F , Habibi Moghadam F, Abbasi Dezfouli S ." (“International Journal of Health and Life Sciences | Home”) Face Mask as a Tool to Prevent the Coronavirus Disease 2019: The Importance and Challenges, Int J Health Life Sci. Online ahead of Print ; 7(1):e109729. doi: 10.5812/ijhls.109729.
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ing Community Mask-Wearing: A Cluster Randomized Trial in Bangladesh
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