Face Masks?

[zziffle]

Here's some late breaking news: the quality of life in Chiang Mai is better than the quality of the air.

I've been here for about 2 months now and have developed a chronic mild sore throat and occasional cough. I suspect it stems from sucking in the fumes while bicycling and scootering around town.

Has anyone tried and had success with wearing a face mask while out in traffic? I don't mind looking like a dork if it improves my health.

[MrBrad]

According to my doctor those cheap face masks and cloth mouth coverings do little more than keep flies and mosquitoes out of your mouth. They may be a considerate item to wear if you yourself have a cold, diminishing contamination to others especially when sneezing or coughing, but for the most part they're just for show.

[junglechef]

Also the slash and burn farming techniques has been causing me to have similar symptoms. I've seen some expensive face masks on the internet on bicycling websites but have not tried yet, does anybody have any experience with these?

[F4UCorsair]

I have no knowledge of any particular masks, but can confirm that the cloth types are useless for anything but keeping insects and particles out of your nose and mouth. The gases present in the air will still cause you grief.

I think you'd probably need a serious type respirator format face mask with several levels of filter, including charcoal, before there would be any benefit. They can be difficult to breathe through because of the 'drag' created by pulling/pushing air through filter elements.

[zziffle]

Ok, I've done some googling on this and will answer my own post with some of the info I found.

Were dealing with particulate matter here, basically soot, and the objective is to keep that out of the lungs. Particulates from standard gasoline engine exhaust is reported to be in the 1 micron range. More troublesome and harmful are diesel engine particulates in the .1 micron, or 100 nano-meter range. The smaller the particles, the more damage they can do. The larger ones lodge in the lung tissue and decrease lung efficiency. The smaller ones can pass through into the blood stream where they do ongoing damage to the heart and various organs, and possibly get into individual cells as well. The health impact is significant with ongoing exposure resulting in a large increase of risk of heart failure and attack. The ability to process oxygen through the lungs and blood is diminished, blood pressure is raised, and the heart losses some ability to adjust its rate in response to various degrees of exertion.

Here's a quote from an article on this topic:

Dr. Xi, a Beijing-based medical doctor and research fellow at the China Oxford Centre for International Health Research, together with Dr. Jeremy Langrish from the University of Edinburgh, recently completed a study that assessed the effectiveness of facemasks in protecting against pollution. Xi and Langrish found that a simple cloth facemask removed approximately 25 percent of the particles produced by a diesel engine, while a 3M brand 8812 industrial facemask removed more than 95 percent of the particles.

I suspect some mis-reporting on this. The quoted article specifically talks about diesel, but if diesel soot is .1 micron and N25 keeps out 95% of .3micron soot, it seems likely that it would let in a greater portion of the smaller diesel soot. So there's some inconsistency in the information I found.

What is clear is that a good quality mask can make a big difference and that the health impact is such that it would be foolish to not use one in areas and times of poor air quality. Looking around at what's available, it looks like the 3M masks are the best bet. This is not surprising. In my experience, 3M always seems to make top notch products. Recommendations are for a vented mask (a small valve that opens on exhale) to make it cooler to wear and prevent fogging of eye glasses and helmet visors. Apparently anything stronger than an N95 rating gets too difficult to breath through.

The most likely candidate I found is the 3M R9211. Stick that in an amazon search for details. I think I'll try to get a pack of those.

Sorry for the essay-length posting. When I see postings this long I usually just skim them at best and jump to the short pithy comments that have greater entertainment value.

[vagabond48]

I have lived in CM 5 years and only use my bicycle to get around in and out of the city. I have been using a mask made by totobobo for over 1 year. They make a few models. I use the one that just covers the mouth which you need to breath through your mouth. If you aren't comfortable with this, they have a model that covers the nose and mouth as well. It is lightweight and easy to use. The mouth only model has worked well for me. You can check out their site here. They have a lot of technical information and testimonials about their mask. The owner of the company is an avid bicyclist.

Edited December 25, 2011 by vagabond48

[zziffle]

Is it possible to breath only through the mouth? Certainly we can breath only through the nose by closing our lips or by plugging the back of the mouth with the tongue. But how do you close of the nose to prevent a portion of the breath coming through that route?

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

There is a 3M retail store just south of the old city. They carry a lot of the masks.

Unfortunately wearing one is kind of like scuba diving. Not the most natural experience but worth it when the air gets bad.

Right now the air is pretty good and nothing like March and April when it CAN get downright hazardous....

[MESmith]

Right now the air is pretty good

Not where I live And I imagine in the city with all the traffic.... but nevermind, you don't see that pollution.

[vagabond48]

Is it possible to breath only through the mouth? Certainly we can breath only through the nose by closing our lips or by plugging the back of the mouth with the tongue. But how do you close of the nose to prevent a portion of the breath coming through that route?

Yes it is possible, but only if you very talented and multifaceted. Seriously, It takes a short time before you get used to breathing through your mouth. You might breath a small amount of air through your nose, if the filter is used in a highly polluted location and was not replaced timely or if you are bicyclist, possibly while doing hard aerobic cycling forcing you to breath a lot deeper. Otherwise, breathing in through the mouth and out of your nose was easy for me. Obviously, I am very talented and multifaceted.

[Femme]

There is a 3M retail store just south of the old city. They carry a lot of the masks.

Unfortunately wearing one is kind of like scuba diving. Not the most natural experience but worth it when the air gets bad.

Right now the air is pretty good and nothing like March and April when it CAN get downright hazardous....

Do you know the name of the street, or a shop that is nearby?

[zziffle]

Is it possible to breath only through the mouth? Certainly we can breath only through the nose by closing our lips or by plugging the back of the mouth with the tongue. But how do you close of the nose to prevent a portion of the breath coming through that route?

Yes it is possible, but only if you very talented and multifaceted. Seriously, It takes a short time before you get used to breathing through your mouth. You might breath a small amount of air through your nose, if the filter is used in a highly polluted location and was not replaced timely or if you are bicyclist, possibly while doing hard aerobic cycling forcing you to breath a lot deeper. Otherwise, breathing in through the mouth and out of your nose was easy for me. Obviously, I am very talented and multifaceted.

Well, you must be very talented and multifaceted indeed. You must also have very unique physiology. Without a swimmer's type nose plug, the only way to block air intake through the nose while allowing it through the mouth would be to move the palette back to cut off the nasal air passage. But the palette cannot move. It is only the tongue that can move in there. It can block the air passages from just the mouth by pressing against the palette, or block both the nose and mouth passages by pressing against the back of the throat, but there's no place where it can block just the nose passage. Unfortunately, the laws of physics dictate that, even though you think you are breathing only through the mouth, you are in fact breathing through both the mouth and nose. When you place a filter over the mouth you are decreasing that air flow and forcing even more air to pass through the nose unfiltered. Get a full mask.

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

There is a 3M retail store just south of the old city. They carry a lot of the masks.

Unfortunately wearing one is kind of like scuba diving. Not the most natural experience but worth it when the air gets bad.

Right now the air is pretty good and nothing like March and April when it CAN get downright hazardous....

Do you know the name of the street, or a shop that is nearby?

I think its Wualai road which heads toward Airport. A ways and on the left hand side heading south.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Right now the air is pretty good

Not where I live And I imagine in the city with all the traffic.... but nevermind, you don't see that pollution.

Also where you live. It's always funny to see people, like the OP, blame their own health issues on some outside factors.

So for all of yous benefit I checked the numbers, and the data for the city is not even worse then some distance out of town. (The Yupparat College station shows slightly better values than the Mae Rim one, and also better than the stations in much more rural areas like Chiang Rai. Tough all readings are perfectly fine, as you would expect for this time of year.)

Of course if you ride a bike through rush hour traffic you're going to breathe in more crap than when riding through the forest, but that's one for Captain Obvious.

As others have said, proper masks take effort to breathe through, so not the most comfortable when riding a bicycle.

Buy a car. A Prius if you must.

Edited December 26, 2011 by WinnieTheKhwai

[Ulysses G.]

Oh goody. Is it the time of year to complain about air quality already?

[canuckamuck]

I see quite a few people just put a hand over their mouth. It seems to work really well for them.

[vagabond48]

Oh goody. Is it the time of year to complain about air quality already?

Wearing a face mask year round isn't a bad idea for many of the worldwide urban areas.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

You can find them on Amazon.com : http://www.amazon.co...24863437&sr=8-2

EDIT: Oh, wait: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=pm-10+mask&x=0&y=0#/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dust+mask&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Adust+mask

Edited December 26, 2011 by WinnieTheKhwai

[ogb]

Oh goody. Is it the time of year to complain about air quality already?

I'd suggest a sticky be pinned to the front page: "The air in Chiang Mai is CRAP for much of the year - deal with it in your own way, and at your own peril"

[WinnieTheKhwai]

^ LOL, that's EXCELLENT!

And really the only sticky that's needed, one to cut down on the whining and not just about this topic. It could go something like:

YES :

YES, the air is crap whenever it doesn't rain.

YES, the nightlife sucks and is getting worse.

YES, everybody hates Songkran and leaves to the Philippines

YES, prices go up.

YES, any non-THB currency will soon be on par with the Zimbabwean Dollar.

NO, Rim Ping doesn't stock every brand of comfort food you grew up on.

YES, it rains a lot in September.

YES, this may be followed by flooding.

If any of this bothers you then don't visit, or deal with it at your own peril!

Then all that's needed is to post a link to the sticky, along with one or two or four or 20 links to previous times the issue was discussed ad vomitum.

Edited December 26, 2011 by WinnieTheKhwai

[uptheos]

^ LOL, that's EXCELLENT!

And really the only sticky that's needed, one to cut down on the whining and not just about this topic. It could go something like:

YES :

YES, the air is crap whenever it doesn't rain.

YES, the nightlife sucks and is getting worse.

YES, everybody hates Songkran and leaves to the Philippines

YES, prices go up.

YES, any non-THB currency will soon be on par with the Zimbabwean Dollar.

NO, Rim Ping doesn't stock every brand of comfort food you grew up on.

YES, it rains a lot in September.

YES, this may be followed by flooding.

If any of this bothers you then don't visit, or deal with it at your own peril!

Then all that's needed is to post a link to the sticky, along with one or two or four or 20 links to previous times the issue was discussed ad vomitum.

Edited December 26, 2011 by uptheos