Slashdot Mirror
Face Masks Provide Chinese With False Hope Against Pollution
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Emily Sohn reports at Discovery Magazine that high levels of air pollution in Beijing, where levels of pollution have spiked above 750 micrograms per cubic meter, have caused a run on face masks as people look for ways to protect themselves from the smog. The capital is on its sixth day of an 'orange' smog alert — the second-highest on the scale — with the air tasting gritty and visibility down to a few hundred meters. But experts say that under the hazards they're facing, the masks are unlikely to help much. In fact, images of masked citizens navigating the streets of Beijing highlight the false confidence that people put in face masks in all sorts of situations, including flu outbreaks and operating rooms. For a step up in protection, consumers can buy a category of mask known technically as N95 respirators, which are generally available at hardware stores. N95 facemasks are often used in industrial workplace situations to protect against things like lead dust and welding fumes, and they are certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to trap 95 percent of particles sent through them in testing situations. But in order to work N95 respirators need to be professionally fitted to each person's individual face (PDF) to make sure there is a tight seal with no leaks. If they truly fit right, they are uncomfortable to wear."
Masks are magically thought to prevent everything.
A friend of mine caught a cab in Shanghai during one of its more scary bird flu outbreaks.
The cab driver wore a mask with a hole cut out of it for his cigarette.
The use of face masks in flu outbreaks is to prevent the spread of droplets from the person with the flu. (Note that it's possible to shed and spread influenza before you realize that you're infected.) But a face mask is worthless at protected you from getting the flu if you touch near your eyes after touching an infected surface. Hand washing and being conscious about touching your face is more important.
That's the UK, the pollution in China is worse by orders of magnitude, literally millions of people a year will be dying there from lung diseases.
People don't take traffic pollution seriously because they can't see it, even though the number of deaths caused dwarfs vehicle accident deaths.
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When I was working near asbestos nobody told me that the masks had to be "professionally fitted" so I doubt the journalist knows more than they googled about the topic.
However they certainly are uncomfortable especially with safety goggles pushing them down on your nose.
The work / factories will just move to the next place that take the jobs at any cost.
As someone who has worked in an industrial environment, and who has had to wear respirators and other PPE, I can say that N95 respirators do not need to be 'professionally fitted'. They do need to fit just right, but the users themselves can do that. Yes, they can be uncomfortable if you've never worn a mask before, but once you are used to them you can wear them all day (as many many workers do everyday).
While the author focusses on fitting, he completely ignores the other issue with N95 masks: there are many different types that are designed to filter different things. There are different masks for dusts and particles, nuisance odours, welding fumes, acid gasses, organic vapors and biologicals. The author ignores that people will need to know what type of respirator they need as buying the wrong type will make it far less effective. Not all N95 respirators are the same. For a sutiation like this, a dust and particle filter with nuisance level acid gas (NOx, SO2, etc) would be better, but unlikely to be found at many hardware stores.
What people don't seem to realise is that the gasses that make up smog (CO, NOx, SO2, ozone, organic compounds) can be just as damaging, if not more, than the dust and particulates. Even N95 masks only filter out nuisance levels of these.
Whenever I'm in Beijing, I like to rock my IIT 91440 Twin-Cartridge Respirator with Goggles, ideally with my Day-Glo Yellow Tychem Qc Chemical Protection Coveralls. Authorities don't give me a problem, they just assume I'm from North Korea.
'Red' smog alert is expressed by drawing the chinese pictogram for 'sandpaper' inside the pictogram for 'lungs'.
(yes, I know that that's absolutely bullshit; but I've had enough of that 'Since I've been strongarmed into giving a commencement address to H.S. 341232's singularly uninteresting class, did you know that the Chinese word for 'crisis' is the combination of their word for 'danger' with their word for 'opportunity'? Really makes you think, doesn't it? Now, don't get too shiftfaced in college, what you learn there costs you more per hour than you are ever likely to make, so keep that in mind. And, um, Go class of 2000-and-something!'
Be sure to chew your air for at least 30 seconds before inhaling.
It's more complicated than that. China has hundreds of millions of people all desperately struggling to pull themselves up into the middle class. They know how Americans, Europeans and their successful Chinese peers live because it's in their faces every day through ubiquitous advertising and ostentatious public displays of wealth. They want the trappings of that consumer lifestyle so badly that they don't care what they have to do to get them. Who wants to be the one to tell them, "no you can't have that because it will ruin the environment"? Against these base desires of human nature, no amount of logic or reasoning about consequences can prevail.
Except that their choice is not poison everyone until they drop like flies or remain a poor agrarian society. They have the benefit of a century of research into how to industrialize without poisoning people. They have the option to find a happy medium.
Yeah, try telling stupid people that. It's much easier to tell people to wear masks to protect themselves than to protect other people. People are such selfish f***s.
For full protection you most definitely need to get the face mask professionally fitted. What this means is that you're shaven clean and strapped to a machine which measured the airpressure inside and outside the mask to establish if any flow is bypassing the filtering elements.
In my case that involved wearing it breathing normally, breathing heavily, nodding, shaking my head, pulling a face, hunched over looking down, while reading a pre-defined sentence, and then breathing normally again. The machines then give you a pass or fail. My work stocks 2 different dust masks and 3 different half face respirators for this very reason and a mark goes on our security card to determine which models we're allowed to wear.
Now all that being said none of this at all means that a mask / respirator which hasn't been fit tested is useless, ultimately it just means that it won't afford you the maximum protection (i.e. 90% of particles filtered rather than 95%). Mind you fit testing is a relatively recent idea. Australian OHS regulations have only included the requirement for fit testing for a few years now. Certainly I doubt anyone would have been tested more than about 5-10 years ago.
I encourage you to do it though. Nothing says waste of time more than putting on a respirator with a P3 filter only to find you can't get more than a P1 rating because it doesn't suit your face. (That P stuff is Australian, I don't know the American ratings)
The smog in Bejing is mostly due to coal fires for heating and automobile traffic, not factories.