Stone Oak Highlights:
Masks Are Effective, And Here’s How To Wear Them
August 2020
In light of the worldwide pandemic, there’s been a multitude of information
floating around the internet concerning how to properly wear a face mask, if masks actually work to curb the spread of COVID-19, and, if you do wear a mask, how to properly sanitize it. I spoke with the San Antonio Health Department, Vanderbilt University Health Center, and Care Now Stone Oak to set the record straight.
CDC recommends that mask-wearing is for people over the age of 2 and anyone that doesn’t “[have] trouble breathing, is[n’t] unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance”. While not 100% effective, masks stop the spread of respiratory droplets expelled from our breath. This protects others from the potentially virus-carrying spray. As for breathing in harmful levels of carbon dioxide while wearing a mask, Vanderbilt University Health Center’s website addressed this by stating that mask-wearing “has not been shown to cause carbon dioxide toxicity or lack of adequate oxygen in healthy people. For some persons with severe chronic lung disease, wearing a mask may make breathing more difficult, but not because of CO2 retention.” In other words, wearing a mask will not harm you if you are already able to breathe. Unless you have an underlying condition that affects your breathing, wearing a mask for a few hours is fine.
Pertaining to proper wear, the facilities all said the same thing: the mask must cover your face from the tip of the nostril to the bottom of the chin. This way ensures that you are not spraying droplets from either orifice, as well as containing droplets that might travel down the mask to the lower half of the face.
For sanitation, there are two methods that were repeated over and over during my conversations with these facilities--washing your cloth mask with laundry or, if pressed for time, spraying the cloth down with a Lysol spray (or the equivalent), and leaving to dry. Another effective method is to hand wash the mask with soap and hot water, the consensus being that cleaning solutions are the most effective sanitization option.
To read the article on the Stone Oak Highlights website, click here.