Here's a useful article for health workers and those around medical facilities.
SARS What you should know about protective masks
SARS — Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome — is now part of everyday conversation for many Canadians. Though public health officials aren't advising we wear face masks, that's not stopping people from buying them. But are they effective? Marketplace tested several types of protective masks.
It has become an all too familiar scene at hospitals in and around Toronto: staff handing out masks; members of the public and health care workers lining up to get them.
But how do they know which masks are the right ones? There are now growing concerns that people at risk might not be getting enough protection from the masks they’re wearing.
And if that’s you, how do you know which masks are The right ones?
public health department recommends one called the N95 mask for health care workers. A full-page advisory taken out by the Ontario Ministry of Health tells people who are quarantined simply to “wear a mask.” It doesn’t specify which kind works best.
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Ugis Bickis is an Environmental Hygienist who teaches at Queens University in Kingston. He’s been studying the effectiveness of masks for years. But he found a little surprise when he went shopping recently.
"I went to one of the drug stores across the street from my office, and they were sold out of what most people would consider to be a mask, but I did find one that claimed to provide protection from dust and germs. But it clearly came from the dark ages of personal protection and certainly wouldn't be useful for protecting people from SARS."
Canadians are obviously buying all kinds of products that there never intended to protect people from SARS, so Marketplace decided to do some testing.
We bought three kinds of N95s, the ones recommended for health care workers. Then we randomly picked a procedure mask (the kind you might see on your dentist), a surgical mask (like you'd see in a hospital) and one of those dust masks you often find in hardware stores, used for painting and other messy work. We also tossed in a bandana — a sampling of the products some Canadians have been using since the SARS scare began.
We brought our collection to one of the best-known labs for testing this sort of thing — a long way from the SARS outbreak — in Salt Lake City, Utah.
One of our Marketplace producers arrived at Nelson Laboratories, where microbiologist Jeff Hills prepared the masks for testing.
They spray a fine salt solution with particles the size of those in viruses similar to SARS — particles as small as 0.3 microns. So small you can’t even see the spray.
"What we’re looking for is those sub-micron aerosols that could be created when you sneeze or when someone coughs, but they’re going to be the smaller particles that you don’t see, because they’ll stay in the air stream for some period of time," Hills said.
We tested three versions of each mask, just to make certain our tests were precise.
"You want a lower number on the penetration," Hills said.
The lower the number means the fewer particles made it through the mask.
The results
The red bandana. Cost $3.99. It filtered out only about 10 per cent of small viruses.
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The dust mask didn’t do much better. It cost $1.25. Its best rating: 13 per cent of tiny particles blocked. Just barely ahead of the bandana.
The filter mask cost $7.99. But it, too, ranked amongst the worst. You’d only be protected from about 13 per cent of all small viruses.
That doesn't surprise Jeff Hills.
"Products that are designed for use in your basement, or for out in the garden or something like that should not necessarily be used to protect against biological agents or particulate matter," Hills said.
The big surprise came when we tested masks being used by those most at risk — health care workers. A procedure mask — similar to a surgical mask has been deemed acceptable for protection against SARS by Health Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Health.
The procedure mask scored 34 per cent. The surgical mask filtered out 62 per cent of the particles — much better than the dust mask or bandana.
But even health care workers are wearing surgical masks to protect from the risk of SARS. Ever since the scare first hit, Ugis Bickis has been saying they don’t work. He’s angry that this is the frontline protection for many health care workers.
"Particularly health care workers or family members of people who are sick and who are trying to protect themselves, really deserve better protection that a surgical mask," Bickis told Marketplace.
One piece of good news: the masks that all health officials recommend as the best protection against SARS did well in our test. They are called N95s — and they more than live up to their name. The three kinds we tested filtered out between 97 and 99.7 per cent of all the virus-like particles.
One thing we didn’t test for was how these masks fit. Bickis says that’s a big concern.
"What happens when I put this mask on, and again if I were to tie it up…there would be some kind of gap between the mask and my face, and when I inhale, some of the air would come in through that gap. That means that there is no filtration offered."
These masks don’t usually work for children or men with beards. Bickis is dismayed by the lack of information.
"I think people are very seriously misinformed. Those who are advising on what kind of protection to wear simply don’t have the necessary knowledge to do so properly."
Our tests suggest the N95 might offer the best protection against sars. But there’s another worry: if people who don’t really need them keep buying them, there might not be enough left over for those in real danger of being exposed to the virus.
source: CBC.
That’s awful. The fear over SARS seems to affect more people than SARS itself.