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Assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks

Due to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, wearing a disposable face mask has become a worldwide daily routine, not only for medical operators or specialized personnel, but also for common people. Notwithstanding the undeniable positive effect in reducing the risk of virus transmission, it is important to unde...

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Autores principales: Buzzin, Alessio, Domènech-Gil, Guillem, Fraschetti, Elena, Giovine, Ennio, Puglisi, Donatella, Caputo, Domenico
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9540090/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36207345
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-20692-9
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author Buzzin, Alessio
Domènech-Gil, Guillem
Fraschetti, Elena
Giovine, Ennio
Puglisi, Donatella
Caputo, Domenico
author_facet Buzzin, Alessio
Domènech-Gil, Guillem
Fraschetti, Elena
Giovine, Ennio
Puglisi, Donatella
Caputo, Domenico
author_sort Buzzin, Alessio
collection PubMed
description Due to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, wearing a disposable face mask has become a worldwide daily routine, not only for medical operators or specialized personnel, but also for common people. Notwithstanding the undeniable positive effect in reducing the risk of virus transmission, it is important to understand if a prolonged usage of the same face mask can have effectiveness on filtering capability and potential health consequences. To this aim, we present three investigations. A survey, carried out in central Italy, offers an overview of the distorted public awareness of face mask usage. A functional study shows how prolonged wearing leads to substantial drops in humid air filtration efficiency. Finally, a morphological analysis reports the proliferation of fungal or bacteria colonies inside an improperly used mask. Our study highlights therefore that wearing a face mask is really beneficial only if it is used correctly.
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spelling pubmed-95400902022-10-09 Assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks Buzzin, Alessio Domènech-Gil, Guillem Fraschetti, Elena Giovine, Ennio Puglisi, Donatella Caputo, Domenico Sci Rep Article Due to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, wearing a disposable face mask has become a worldwide daily routine, not only for medical operators or specialized personnel, but also for common people. Notwithstanding the undeniable positive effect in reducing the risk of virus transmission, it is important to understand if a prolonged usage of the same face mask can have effectiveness on filtering capability and potential health consequences. To this aim, we present three investigations. A survey, carried out in central Italy, offers an overview of the distorted public awareness of face mask usage. A functional study shows how prolonged wearing leads to substantial drops in humid air filtration efficiency. Finally, a morphological analysis reports the proliferation of fungal or bacteria colonies inside an improperly used mask. Our study highlights therefore that wearing a face mask is really beneficial only if it is used correctly. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9540090/ /pubmed/36207345 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-20692-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Buzzin, Alessio
Domènech-Gil, Guillem
Fraschetti, Elena
Giovine, Ennio
Puglisi, Donatella
Caputo, Domenico
Assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks
title Assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks
title_full Assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks
title_fullStr Assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks
title_full_unstemmed Assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks
title_short Assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks
title_sort assessing the consequences of prolonged usage of disposable face masks
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9540090/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36207345
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-20692-9
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