Ep030: N95 vs. Surgical vs. DIY Masks, how to protect ourselves?--with Dr. Talhelm

 
www.deepintosleep.co

Thomas Talhelm

with Dr. Yishan Xu

 

TODAY’S GUEST


Dr. Thomas Talhelm is an associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of business and founder of Smart Air, a social enterprise that promotes open data and low-cost air purifiers to help people cope with air pollution in China and India.

RESOURCES

Finding the best face mask materials

Can masks capture coronavirus particles?

N95 Masks vs. Surgical Masks: Which Is Better at Preventing The Coronavirus?

Can DIY Masks Protect Us from Coronavirus?

What Are The Best Materials for Making DIY Masks?

Thank You for Listening!

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Transcript

-  0:00  

Hello welcome to deep into sleep This is Yishan. So right now we are all facing Coronavirus. And a lot of people start having nightmares cannot sleep well. One cause of the anxiety is related to facial masks. Now more and more experts start encouraging people to wear facial masks when we go out to protect ourselves and people around us. However, many of us are not able to find any facial masks to buy either in the stores or online. So if we are not able to find any masks to buy, can we just make some at home? If so, what materials should we use to make it really effective and comfortable enough the same time? If we're able to buy some or bought some earlier then what's the difference? To a 95 mask versus a surgical mask, are they effective at all? Or are they equally effective? So today we have Dr. Thomas toe him. He is an associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also the founder of smart air, which is a social enterprise that promotes open data and low cost air purifiers to help people cope with air pollution in both China and India. So he will review a lot of published data through the literature's and his plan to us What are the signs behind musk us and help us answer questions about DIY masks at home. Just a heads up this is an hour long interview, but totally worth your time. There are a lot of great data showing and I have learned a lot from his talk and presentation. So hopefully you will find it helpful too. And the YouTube video with his slides will be find in our YouTube channel. If you just Google Mind Body garden psychology, you should be able to find it. And we are still editing the video. We will put it on the YouTube channel possibly sometime early next week. And I will add the link on the show note once it's done. And the Show Notes for this episode is going to be deep into sleep.co forward slash episode four slash 030.

-  2:52  

Welcome, Thomas.

-  2:53  

Thank you, Yishan. Nice to be chatting with you.

-  2:56  

Yeah, nice to see you again. Before we get started Do you want to introduce yourself to the audience a little bit? Like who you are what you're doing right now?

-  3:07  

Yeah, so I'm gonna start. Well, I used to be assistant, now associate professor at the University of Chicago. I'm at the booth School of Business. But don't let that fool you. I don't really know anything about business. I am merely a cultural psychologist. So I studied culture. And I do a lot of my research in China. And I spent a lot of time living in China. Now, listeners are probably wondering, why would this person know anything about masks then, and that is a total accident. I was lived in China for six or seven years and my life and throughout my time of living in China, I became more and more aware of air pollution and what to do about it. And I think most people, when approaching that problem would just go out and buy things to try to fix it by an air purifier by a mask. But my approach was, I wanted to figure things out. out and figure out whether it works. In particular, I was worried that, you know, a lot of companies say, Oh, you need to buy our thousand dollar air purifier, and I thought like really, really need to spend that much money does it have to be that expensive. And so I researched it. And I found out that I could make my own purifier for $30. And I tested it at home. And then I published all the data. And then eventually I started teaching other people how to do this, like, Hey, you don't have to spend $1,000 you can protect yourself like this, here's how to do it. Here's the data. And then eventually that turned into a social enterprise that I call smart air. And smart air is is just you know, we provide some masks, but mostly just simple air purifiers. And our goal is to first just reduce the cost of clean air. The idea is that, you know, these machines are really simple. You don't need to spend $1,000 don't listen to marketing, don't listen to, you know claims about superior technology that happens to cost way more than other things just it's a simple science and then We also do open data tests. And this is the same sort of thing, right? Like, our belief is that if people understand how things like air purifiers and masks work, number one, they'd be better able to protect themselves. But number two, they wouldn't be wasting money on companies that are convincing them about things that don't really need to cost that much money. And so along with the Coronavirus, like when that came out, there were a lot of questions about do masks work, do they capture a really small particles do air purifiers capture virus particles, things like that. And we had a lot of data on this. And we continue to do more tests on you know, masks and different materials for masks. And so, that's, you know, we were just sort of doing that already as an organization and it happened to be really useful during the during the Coronavirus stuff. So, yeah, tests and stuff of masks.

-  5:51  

Right sounds I especially like the data driven part. Sounds like you've been collecting the data to really show yourself and other people People that that really work before just to make the air more clean, but at a much lower cost. But right now under the Coronavirus situation, we all really need masks. I have a lot of friends here. And I hear a lot of news that people even people realize mask is important. They still cannot find where to buy it. And also a lot of people I know still out there don't be leaving wary musk gonna really help with the situation, right.

-  6:30  

Yeah. And there's been so much conflicting advice on masks. I mean, when back in February and early March in the US, for example, like the Surgeon General was out telling people and he literally had a tweet, saying masks are not effective at this and so he was telling people to stop buying masks. And so we're getting conflicting. You know, sometimes they're saying they're not effective. Sometimes they're saying only sick people should wear masks but not healthy people. But now more recently, it's changed to oh actually healthy people. should wear them too. And it is kind of all over the place. And it shocks me because I should say I'm not an expert in air pollution or masks, listeners should definitely know that I don't ask anybody to believe what I say. Everything that I'm going to say is going to be based on data, either tests that I've done or peer reviewed research that I've read. And so people should look at the data for themselves. They should not just believe what I say, should look at the data. But it shocks me that the recommendations have been all over the place, because the data is not all over the place. The data is actually quite clear, when you look at it, and we'll talk about that today. But But I hope one thing that listeners come away with is, is the science on this is a lot more settled than what people have been saying. And when people are giving recommendations a lot of the times I honestly think they just haven't read the research, you know, like it takes time, they could download these peer reviewed papers and actually look into it. And most the time people just haven't, right, they're giving sort of their intuition. Or their understanding or what they've heard from other people. So today, what listeners are going to get is data, we're going to talk about how people have tested these questions directly. So that'll be one nice sort of theme to take away from today.

-  8:16  

Yeah, I think that'll be very valuable not only finding the reliable data or like a lot of data outside, but also how to interpret the data. Yeah. Uh huh. With a very, like, objective way, especially for you someone been doing research for so many years in this field, you possibly take data in a very different approach and social media than other people outside of this research field, how they explain the data. I know a lot of times there are misunderstandings and just take part of the data and you know, and flat amplify that and make it very a huge deal but missed a lot of other pictures.

-  8:59  

You like one of my favorite examples of this in the in the mask research is so there's there's a question of whether or not giving masks to just regular people, not healthcare workers, not experts, you know, people who've been trained, but just regular people do masks work. And there are two different ways to frame those results. One is to say, and they're both accurate to the data, but they're just different ways of framing it. One is you can look at the overall result. So there was a study in Australia where they they randomized, just regular parents whose kids had the flu. They randomized them. There's just the regular flu. It's not the Coronavirus. This study was years ago. They randomized the parents to wear a mask or not at home while they were taking care of their kid who had the flu. Now, the overall effect of people who were randomized to wear masks was not significant. So there was there wasn't difference in how many parents got infected wearing a mask versus not wearing a mask. However, the problem is a lot of these parents stopped wearing the mask. People aren't wearing you know, used to wearing masks, people sometimes find them uncomfortable. Or sometimes parents reported their kids didn't like that they were the parents were wearing a mask. Maybe they thought it was scary. And so the parents stopped wearing a mask, right? Well, if you remove those people, if you analyze separately, the data from the parents who actually wore the masks continuously, you know, throughout the study period, versus the people parents who didn't wear the who stopped wearing the masks. Well, then different stories emerge. For the parents who stopped wearing the masks. Not surprisingly, they don't work, right. That's not a headline, right? People who stop wearing masks they stop working right. But for the parents who continue to wear the masks, there was a significant effect of mass usage, right. And so two people could could describe that especially In a very brief new story, somebody could say, hey, this study found that masks don't work when they're not worn by, you know, when they're worn by regular people, right? It's true, right? The problem is, if you look in the data, it really tells us masks do work. You just have to wear them conscientiously. You have to keep wearing them. Right. The interesting thing to me there is that's a question of data interpretation, right? Or how do we communicate this data? They're both right. But it's just a little bit more complicated than they do where they don't work.

-  11:30  

Right? Yeah. So now I really look forward to your takeaway from some of the data about masks. Like I know your resource of finding data and other researchers away you dig in really the tiny details a lot of general public audience may not know how to do it may not have the time. You will you throw a paper to them. They may get very confused.

-  11:56  

Yeah. Mm hmm.

-  11:58  

Yeah. So Where should we get started?

-  12:02  

Yeah, I think a really basic question that a lot of people are asking is do things like masks and air purifiers capture virus particles, right? Right. Now people's intuition on this is that viruses are really small. And so therefore, they probably don't capture viruses. Right? There's, well, there's two things to know about this one is sometimes viruses. Sometimes, oftentimes, viruses will travel on water droplets. So people, people might have heard of this, like you sneeze, water comes out, and the virus is not flying by itself, but it's actually flying on a piece of water, or a droplet of water. And so that makes the particle size bigger, but viruses can also travel without water. So it's a relevant question. Now, people's intuition here is that the smaller the particle, the harder it is to capture. Oddly enough, that's not true. There's a really weird thing about filtration. When you have a fiber filter, like in a mask or in an air purifier, you have what's called a hep a filter, just just fibers. It is true that the smaller the particle, the harder it is to capture until you get down to very small particles. When you get down to very small particles, what happens is they're so small, that when they travel through the air, they get bounced around by air molecules, right? We're talking about very, very small particles here, right? They hit a molecule of air. And because they're so small, it actually bounces off the air. And then it's another molecule and it bounces. So these particles are so small, that they can fit through a filter. Right? If you just could, you know, take a really small particle and try to fit it through a filter, it can fit, right it's that small. But the thing is because they're so small, they get bounced by air molecules. They end up hitting the fiber Anyway, right because they fly in these random patterns, because they get bounced around. That's called Brownian motion. That's the scientific name for that. But anyway, that that's sort of the theoretical explanation. Let's let's talk about some data. Right. Now. The relevant data here is written Well, well, I'll share my screen first. So we can we can look at some data here. Sure.

-  14:20  

So just to clarify, this is not for this data specifically. It's not directly about Coronavirus.

-  14:27  

Yeah. So what we're going to see is Yeah, so that's a theoretical explanation of why filters can capture really small particles. Right. Now, in the data that we're going to see. We actually will see tests where researchers shoot virus particles at filters. Okay, and then we'll see how many how many do they capture right now scientists haven't done this with a Coronavirus because that's it's too new. I mean, we just haven't had the time to do that. But what I'll show you is will show you viruses that are both larger and smaller. Coronavirus and we'll what we're going to find is that they're effective. Right? Cool. So it would be really weird if filters could capture particles that are bigger and smaller than the Coronavirus that are also viruses and yet somehow wouldn't be able to capture the scene seems basically impossible. Right, right. So we'll also see particles that are at this the same size as the Coronavirus. So, okay, so no tests I'm going to show you we just don't have test of the Coronavirus itself. We have tests of other viruses and other particles that are the same size.

-  15:32  

Yeah, let's take a look.

-  15:33  

Yeah. All right. Let me just share my screen here. All right. So

-  15:43  

here's what we want. Alright. So the first question is, how big is the Coronavirus? What is the size of those particles? This we do have an answer for already scientists have already measured the the Coronavirus under under electron microscopes and what they find On average, the diameter is point one to five microns, point one to five microns. Very small, right? Here's an idea. This gives you a sense of how big that is. Right? So this is for example, right here is a red blood cell. That's seven microns. People might be familiar Pm 2.5. These are right. This is a category of pollution. These are basically pollution particles that can penetrate deep into our low lungs. That's 2.5 microns. Here is a type of bacteria that's point five microns, and the Coronavirus is point one micron. So we're talking about very small particles. That's a human hair would be even larger than the biggest particle you're seeing right here. And so what you'll see for example, we, through smart air, we've pointed out how in the media, people are making the opposite claim from us. So this one's interesting. This one's in Business Insider. They say And then the five masks. So these are those sort of fancy masks that you'll see sometimes in hospitals and construction workers wearing. They say and 95 masks filter out airborne particles down to point three microns in diameter. Now remember the Coronavirus is point one, two,

-  17:18  

right?

-  17:21  

So anybody reading that would say Oh, so it doesn't filter out the Coronavirus, right. It's smaller than that. So it doesn't filter it out. All right, I had the same reasonable intuition makes sense. It's just totally wrong. It just happens. just happens to be totally wrong. Right. And I don't mean to say that, like, other people are so dumb, I'm so smart. Like I thought this when I first started looking into these questions, right when I first started getting an air purifier, I thought that this that totally made sense to me.

-  17:52  

Right? Just think about size, right? It does not work. It should not work.

-  17:57  

In that then the problem is, I think the real interest Thing is, we think that when we think of filters, we think of things on the scale that we can understand objects that we can understand, right? So if you've ever used like a strainer, just drain like pasta in the sink, like we can understand that, right? If the pasta is bigger than the holes, right, then it gets stays in the bowl. And if it's smaller than the holes, that goes through simple like I understand that. But the problem is, things get really different when we talk about really, really small particles. That's when things start behaving differently. And we don't have a metaphor for that, right. Like, we don't experience things that small. And so our intuition is just, it's just not right about that, right. But let's look at the data. So researchers have tested this question, right. And the way they tested it, this is this is not a scientific picture. It's just my cartoonish drawing of this. All they do is they they put for example, right here you have a diesel generator, you know So you have diesel and gasoline, and they have a pipe and then they put a mask on the end of that. And then they use what's called a particle counter to test for very small particles. So how many of those particles can go through the math? Right? Now this machine tests down to point 007 microns. So this is even smaller than the Coronavirus, right, very, very small particles here. And here's what they find. So this is the percentage of particles that are blocked by different masks. So in this study, they found that a cotton handkerchief, for example, blocked 28% surgical mask was 80%. And then this, this one right here that I have like a little picture of that's like an 95 mask that blocked over 95% it was 96.6%. So even when we include these very small particles, masks can capture them and even the cotton here, right? It's not nothing. It's right. It's not an Professional mask, but I don't think anybody thinks that cotton is going to be equivalent to a professional mask, right? The question is, is it better than nothing? Right? So okay, so So what we've established here is that different mask materials, even just cotton can capture particles that small. But I remember I posted this data, and somebody asked me, but you know, what about virus particles? Maybe viruses are different. Maybe they have a different shape or something like that. Well, the interesting thing is researchers have shot actual virus particles and masks. And here's what they found. That's that's what this graph is. Now, this is a little complicated. So I'll walk you through it. Right here. This is penetration. So this is what percentage of particles can make it through the mask, right? So what we want is we want this to be very low, right? We want not very many viruses to get through the mask, right?

-  20:55  

And so here's what they find. These are viruses of different diameters. So we have 20 nanometers here, which is even smaller than the Coronavirus. And then we have up to 80 nanometers. Just bottom line is the very small virus particles. The two different lines here are different air flows. This bottom line is if you're breathing sort of moderately, this, this line right here is if you're breathing heavily. And so if you're breathing heavily, the filtration of a mask is slightly less effective as what you can see. But what you can see here is that this dotted line right here is 5%. And remember, these are in 95 masks, so we would hope that they can capture 95%. Or in other words, about 5% of particles are going to get through and that's what they find. Right? So on when people are breathing heavily through these masks. This is actually in a in a lab. It's not on somebody's face, but it's just testing them tears. The worst performance here is about 95.5%. So they're capturing about 95.5% Or put it another way about 4% of the virus particles are going through the mask. That makes sense. So we're talking about actual virus particles shot it. Real masks. These are not like simulated masses, just masks that people can buy online. Well, if, if they were available right now, you could buy these online. This This one is a three m mask right here that they were testing, right? There are differences between masks. This is a mask that researchers tested that had scored slightly worse in earlier tests. And you can see the penetration here is slightly higher. It's slightly above 5% when people are breathing or when they use a heavy airflow, but not by much. It's about 94% effective. Alright, so the mask was capturing 94% of the virus particles that were being shot at it. Right. So simple answer here. Do you shoot viruses at masks and they capture the virus?

-  23:01  

So my next one works.

-  23:03  

So So masks can capture viruses, right. And now we can remember too, that if a mask is if a virus is traveling on a water droplet, we're probably going to capture even more than the percentages here. Right? Because the water droplets going to be quite a large particle, right? Now, people look at this and they might say, Okay, well, those are just testing whether particles get captured by the mask. But what about if you actually wear a mask? Right? People think if you asked me to wear a mask, maybe the air is going to leak through the sides of the mask, right? So you can test this by having people actually wear a mask. And I've done a test like this. I was fortunate enough to go to the the lab of 3pm in Beijing. Oh, yeah.

-  23:47  

That looked like you. I was wondering.

-  23:49  

Yep, that's me. That's me doing a fit test there. Yeah, so these are called fit tests. You wear a mask, and then they put a tube on the mask to test the air. That's inside the mask while you're actually wearing it. Right. So I'm wearing this mask breathing in it like normal. And this white tube right there is sampling air, it's pulling air out of the mask while I'm reading it. And then this other blue tube is testing air that's just outside the mask. So we can ask how many particles are inside the mask, and how many particles are outside the mask? Right, while somebody's actually wearing it. Right. Now I've done this test. There's a doctor in Beijing, who also did similar tests like this. Also the person who co founded smart air with me, Anna, so she's female, and she's from China. So some people wonder about whether masks fit people of different ethnic backgrounds better or worse. So we'll have her data in there as well. We tested a variety of masks. And here's what we found right here. So these particles By the way, these are points 01 to one micron. So these would include virus sighs particles these would include the Coronavirus. And what you can see is for most of these masks, most of the 95 masks are over here on the left. And you can see that the performance here is quite high. So for example, this one all the way on the left on my face that captured 99.7% of particles, wow. While it was on my face while I was actually wearing it, right. Sometimes they perform worse sometimes on you know, different people's faces. And as results were slightly worse than mine. So for example, this one right here is Anna. That was 99.1%. The worst mask on her face was 92.9%. Right? So yes, that's worse but still very high. Like if you ask you're like if I said hey, this mask is gonna prevent you from breathing 93% of particles, the size of a virus. Is that enough like is that enough for it to be worth it like Yeah. Who would say no to 93%? Right.

-  26:03  

Right. If there was nothing, but if there's nothing 100% for sure, right? So over 90% is pretty good.

-  26:13  

Yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody would expect that, that you get 100% unless you were wearing some sort of crazy hazmat suit or something like that, right? Things are like plastic all over your face or something. Right? Right. Nobody would expect that. I would point out here though, this is a surgical mask over here on the right, that was 63%. And now I think this makes sense to anybody who's ever worn a surgical mask, because they don't fit very tightly. Right, right. Usually on the side, you can feel that the surgical mask is not touching your face very tightly, right? And that's what tests find, right? So if we scroll back up to look at just so just how effective our surgical mask at filtering particles, we can see the surgical mask your score to 80% is quite high. Right? But then we ask, Well, if we take into account how well it fits the face, then it goes lower. Now this was 63%. Right? Meaning, yes, air leaks in the side of surgical masks, right. But the problem is people often think that if any air leaks, then it's ineffective. Right? But 63% is still a lot better than zero. Right? So I'm not saying, hey, you shouldn't buy a well fitting mask, of course, you know, tighter fit is going to be better. Right? Nobody's arguing the other side of that. But the interesting question is, if if I can't find the mask that doesn't fit in, sorry, if I can't find a mask that fits very well. Is it just worth lips Should I just do nothing? Or is something better than nothing? And this data is very clear. 63% is better than nothing. This is only on one person's face, but other tests have found If people Google smart air and surgical masks, they can find other data on that. So this is basically, you know, this is the basic answer to whether masks can capture virus sized particles. And the answer is they can. I think maybe the next question that we would ask then is, okay, well, is there any evidence that masks actually protect people from getting sick? Right, right. Or do you have any questions about the filtration first?

-  28:32  

Ah, I just want to make sure the audience understand the takeaway point, based on the data you showed me looks like. It's definitely better to wear something some kind of mask than nothing. And also depends on the different type of masks. Some masks definitely works better than others, especially if the fit is very well. That's exactly right. Right.

-  28:58  

Yeah, in general. These end 95 or even 99. So actually, one thing I might point out to, to the viewers, this mask over here on the left side, that is actually what's called an en 99. mask. Fortunately, the terms are very easy. And then 95 blocks 95% of articles are above and 99 99%. So it's just it's just slightly higher, right? So this is actually an M 99 mask. The only downside with n 99 masks? Well, one is they tend to be a bit more expensive, about $1. This one's at about $1 or two more expensive than this one right here, the 9001 V, that's an M 95. So that one is about $1, two cheaper than the 99. The other problem is that they 99 tend to be a little bit harder to breathe through. Which makes sense, right? I mean, if it's filtering more particles, it's probably going to be harder to breathe through. Okay, right. Yes, masks. Do fit fit these and 95 and 99 they tend to fit people better than the less professional masks like surgical masks. And also these these ones on the right are mostly sort of commercial masks or like consumer masks. There's the total Bobo right here there's a rest bro, which is the bicycle mask. There's one called the I can breathe. There's also the bog mask. These ones tend in the data that I've seen, these ones tend to fit people's face, not as well as the three M and 95, more sort of professional masks. So that's another thing that people might look for.

-  30:36  

Right, just to add a real life. data point is why interview the doctors who went to hand to help with the psychotherapy work in the hospital in February when the Coronavirus situation got really bad, what their protocol was to were in 95 in the house. whenever they're directly facing people who are diagnosed with Coronavirus the whole time, and if they are working other settings with patients who are not diagnosed or unclear, they wear surgical mask. So, so far based on what I heard and what they heard is no volunteer went to Ohio and stay there for over a month working directly with patients who are diagnosed now got infected.

-  31:31  

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say that, I mean, I imagine that they were probably saving some of the 95 masks for, you know, they probably didn't have a huge supply of masks, right. I mean, if it were me, and I had all the 95 masks in the world, then I would probably just wear them all the time. Right. So like, for example, when I'm when I'm in Beijing, or when I'm in India, and I'm biking or walking outside, I just wear it 99 masks, but supply is not a problem, right? under under my normal life, right? But if supply is limited, you might want to save the 95 masks for the very critical times when you're directly dealing with a known patient. And then for other times where it's less serious, you might, you might use a mask that's not as effective but, you know, saves the 95 for the more critical times, that that would be logical to me. Right? Yeah. All right. Shall we go on to whether masks actually prevent infections?

-  32:37  

Yes. So this

-  32:39  

is there's not that. Yeah. So this is an interesting question, because showing that masks actually capture viruses is a somewhat different question. Right? Once we actually assign people to wear masks now we're asking a slightly different question. Right now we're looking at sort of more real world situations. We're looking at people's behavior. havior So, you know, how does wearing a mask change their behavior? Some people have actually argued that people should not wear masks, because they give people a false sense of security. Right? The idea here is, oh, I wear a mask. And now I think I'm 100% protected. And so then I behave irresponsibly. Maybe I get really close to sick people, right? I spend more time around sick people than I would otherwise. Right. So some people actually argue that masks are dangerous, because they actually make us less responsible. Right. Now, that's not a crazy thought, right? We can make that logic work in our heads. But we'll see data here. Right? If that logic is true, then we should find actually worse results for people who are assigned to wear masks, right? This is a really interesting question. Right? Right. So let's check it out. These are just some of the So okay, so one another question I want to ask as we're, as we're doing this is surgical mask versus a 95. mask, right? There are definitely people out there who say you have to have an A 95 mask. surgical masks just don't work, right? Because the filtration deficiency is lower and because they don't fit as well. I think that's a perfectly good intuition to have. In fact, smart air on our Twitter, we actually pulled people. We told them about a study we said there's a study where they randomized nurses to wear either a surgical mask or an N 95. mask during flu season. Alright, so they're working in hospitals, people have the flu and other illnesses. And then the researchers assign some people to wear surgical masks and they sign other people to wear and then 95 mask, and we just ask people, before we show you the data, which do you think worked better, polled people and 68% of people said that Thought that 95 mask would work better. Right? That's that would have been my guess, right? 14% actually said the surgical masks and 17% said neither, it was supposedly they mean that none of them work. Right. What they found, though, is that there was no significant difference between how many nurses got infected with the 95 mask or the surgical mask. Right? That's really interesting, right? The surgical masks were just as effective as the 95. mask. And if anything, so it was, it was 7%, with a surgical mask got infected, versus 8%, with the 95 mask, so it's not even in that direction, right? You might think, oh, maybe it was a difference, but it was small. The 95 was better, but only slightly better. The data is not even showing that it's actually slightly in the opposite direction, but but the difference here is not statistically significant. Now at that point, you might say, Okay, well, that's only one study. You know, it's random It's, you know, it's strong design. They had 2862 healthcare workers. So the large sample, right, but still, you know, studies, sometimes you find one things and then you find something else. So, we looked at another study, there's another study where they again, randomly assigned healthcare workers to wear and 95 or surgical masks. And what they found here was, again, no significant difference here. Right? So and again, surgical masks were slightly more effective. So in this study, 20% of people who had surgical masks got infected with with influenza, and 22% with the 95 mask got infected. So what we're finding is these two studies, no difference between a surgical mask and an A 95 mask, which is really interesting, right? But at this point, you might think, aha, maybe maybe some smart listeners out there thinking Ah, Right, I've got an I understand what's going on. Neither of these studies have what scientists call a control group. Right? Both groups are wearing masks. So maybe it's that actually masks don't work.

-  37:14  

And so if surgical masks don't work, and then in 95 masks also don't work, then there's no difference. Right? If they both don't work, then there's no difference. Right? We haven't actually established that they work, right? To establish that they work we need to make some people not wear a mask. Right? Right. You need people who don't wear masks to compare to people who do wear masks, right. And those studies that I showed you, we didn't have they everybody was wearing a mask, right? So to do that, the problem is, well, are we really going to make a nurse, not wear a mask? Like Doesn't that seem kind of wrong to force nurses to treat sick people without a mask. I mean, Pretty sure they work right but but it just seems it seems wrong to not make them wear a mask. So one way that people have done this is with a study I was talking about before with families at the home, right? That is a place where people routinely do not wear masks, even though they are in close contact with sick people. Therefore, the researcher said, well, it's ethical. It's okay. If we randomly assign some people to wear masks and some people to not wear masks, right. So in this study in Australia, they assigned people to randomly were randomly assigned some parents whose kids had the flu to wear either an 95, a surgical mask or nothing. So now we truly have a group that's not wearing a mask, right? And then the researchers tracked how many of the parents got the flu. So they're taking care of their kids who are sick with the flu. How many of these parents also get the flu later Right. So what they find is this, of the parents who are not wearing a mask that was 17% got the flu. Now that's kind of interesting, right? It's not 100%. Right? It's not even 50% 17% not a super high rate right. Now, some of these parents, maybe they had the flu before. Some of these, maybe they have the similar flu in years past, right. So we don't know. But anyway, what we do find is that the people who were the parents who were assigned to wear masks did indeed get infected less than people who didn't wear a mask. So of the parents who who were assigned to not wear a mask, 17%, surgical mask 5% and 95 4%. So basically, the risk here is a third. Right? So from roughly 15% to 5%. That's that's roughly the difference that we're talking about. With masks versus not Now, what I said before, though, these results are for the parents who continued to wear the mask during the study, right? You look at the parents who stopped wearing the mask. And they measured this both by asking the parents and sometimes the researchers actually went to people's houses and observed whether the parents were still wearing the mask. So, if you look at the parents who stopped wearing the mask, there was no benefit. Now, some people interpret I've literally have heard people interpret that as masks are not effective.

-   40:33  

That seems wrong to me. Right?

-   40:35  

I think what's leading you? Right, right. At least you should present both way to people. So you know, people can pick and choose and decide how they think about it instead of like, cut half the story. Tell the public?

-   40:50  

Yeah, right. I mean, I heard somebody on the news. I heard a representative from the World Health Organization the other day on the news, and she was complaining that she sees People in public not wearing masks properly. Right? Sometimes people have them over just over their mouth, not over their nose. Or sometimes I, you know, I've seen this too, where people will just wear it around their neck rather than on their face, right? Yeah. I mean, Okay, first of all those people, the people who are wearing it around their neck, they know they're not wearing it properly. Right? They are choosing to do that that is a choice. Right? They're not so dumb that they think a mask works on their neck. Right? So really, it's a question of compliance, rather than a question of, of, of expertise or knowledge. I think that's really the more important question here. Right. And if the question is of compliance, people have masks, but they're not wearing them enough or they're not wearing them properly. Then why are we telling people just to not wear masks? instead? It seems like we should sell people Hey, masks work, but you have to wear them. Right? Doesn't that seem like they're the More read if the problem is that people aren't wearing them enough, well tell people to wear them more, rather than just say give up and say, well just don't wear a mask. Right? Right. That that drives me crazy. Because Because again, they're right, that people don't always wear masks properly. But the conclusion is not then. Well, so we just shouldn't wear masks. That's ridiculous. Right. So I think that's a that's a really interesting question. I will say there are. There are other studies that I know of one other study comparing and 95 and surgical masks that found no difference. So that's studies that found no difference in infection rates. But I do know two studies that did find that and 95 masks were more effective among healthcare workers. Hmm, those two studies were in China. Oh, now I don't No, if there's something different about hospitals there, they were also 10 years ago about 2000. They were after SARS. Not during SARS, but after SARS. So I want to make sure that that I'm not misrepresenting here. So we have several studies that find no difference between 95 and surgical mass. But then we have a few studies that find and 95 are better. So what we can definitely say is that there is there is definitely enough evidence that surgical masks prevent infections. There's definitely enough evidence that and 95 masks prevent infections from the flu in the cold. It's a little bit mixed whether and then 95 is better than a surgical masks a few studies fine. They're the same. A few studies fine and 95 are better. Now if it were me. And if I had all the masks in the world, then I would wear and then 95 minutes. But if I only had a surgical mask, I would definitely wear that. Right that's a reasonable way to interpret

-   43:59  

it. Yeah. Especially for a lot of people who are not a lot options, right? I think personally even just wearing surgical masks to go to the Asian groceries, I definitely feel safer than wearing nothing. And sounds like from the data, the 95 for the infection rate of catching barriers, the 95 mask is equal or better than the surgical mask,

-   44:25  

at least. That's right. Yeah. So the 95 is equal or potentially better than the surgical mask. Now, one reason a surgical mask might might perform as well is well first of all, surgical masks are actually pretty good at filtering particles. I think better than then people think, but another reason that the researchers who can so the researchers who conducted this study, they they were also kind of surprised by these findings, right? They said, Wow, we have surgical masks are so effective. Why is that? And they said maybe one reason is that regardless of the math If you're wearing a mask, you can't touch your nose or your mouth. Right? surgical mask or n 95. They both do that. Right? So that could be one reason we don't know. That's that's just a theory. Right? Another theory might also be that and 95 masks are less generally less comfortable, right? surgical masks are easier to breathe in. They don't fit your face so tightly. Right? And so maybe, again, I'm just theorizing here. Maybe people wear the surgical masks for longer. And they don't take them off as much. Right? So maybe I'm a nurse and I'm wearing a 95 mask and it's, it's great but like, it's hot and it's annoying. And then I have a break. So I take it off for a while and then I put it back on and then we'll in the afternoon I take it off again. Right. So maybe people although the surgical masks, maybe they're worse, performance, but maybe people wear them better. Because they're more comfortable, right? These are just possibilities. We don't know I think this the state of the researches we all we really know is whether they're effective or not. We don't know well enough, all the reasons why and why not?

-   46:14  

Right. A lot of other factors sounds like and some psychological factors. Personal Yeah, from personal experience. I definitely feel like for surgical mask, I could tolerate it longer. And once I have some kind of mask on my face, and definitely more aware, when my hand goes to my face, try to touch my face. Because after reading the news from the very beginning, before I got any masks, I did start paying more attention. Be more mindful about how many times and consciously I'm touching my face, right. I feel like

-   46:50  

you're having that feeling right. Like I touch my face all the time. Why,

-   46:52  

right? Yeah, mascots definitely can help with that. I'm more aware and they stopped myself. Halfway easier.

-   47:01  

Yeah. You know, it's, you know, it's really fascinating. I think of this, you know, as a psychologist as my actual data. So okay, so how people can have the complete opposite intuition or prediction about the same question. So when I posted an article about the 95 versus surgical mask showing those two studies that found that they were just as effective. And in the comments, a lot of people said, multiple multiple people said, Oh, I know why. I know why that is. It's because when you wear a mask, you're more careful. Right? If I wear a mask that reminds me to be more careful. So not only to not touch my face, but maybe like I avoid other people because I'm, I'm in this mode of Be careful, right? I mean, this mode of infection, I shouldn't avoid other people. So maybe I take two more steps away from other people, right? Or maybe I Go to the further train on the subway that has fewer people or something like that, right. So people's people very confidently said, That's why that's why the 95 was not more effective than the surgical mask. But the interesting thing there is I think that's a great hypothesis. Right? Maybe that's true. Right. But isn't it interesting that other health experts are making the opposite prediction? That masks make us more risky? Right? We talked about that before, right? People say, Oh, you shouldn't wear a mask, because actually, it makes you more of a risk taker, right, and makes you more sloppy. You go, now you go do anything you want. Because you feel like you're protected. Right? It's the total opposite prediction. Right? And both are logical, right? both seem like reasonable things to say, maybe humans behave like that. But they're the complete opposite. Right? And who knows, maybe maybe neither is true. The interesting thing I think, like as a psychologist is that this is what we do. Right, we think of, Okay, how would this affect somebody's behavior? And before we run studies? Usually you don't really don't know, right? Like, hypothesis a and hypothesis B are totally plausible to me. We don't know until we get the data. But among regular people, if we see the data, maybe Oh, yeah, of course, it's because their market, oh, it's, you know, all sense of security, but like, we need data on these questions. And so it just, it just bugs me when I hear people very confidently saying, oh, people shouldn't wear masks because it increases risky behavior. When do we really have evidence for that? Because I can just say, in my own experience, I don't think that wearing a mask makes me behave irresponsibly. Maybe I'm wrong. You know, I've never systematically tested myself, but we should be careful when we tell people not to do something, you know, not wear a mask.

-   49:58  

Yeah, and Wondering for some health care professionals, when they make this kind of prediction how much that is, from our own clinical experience, that sometime I feel like it's really different than the evidence based approach, a lot of time for someone been working and their brain automatically filter out and the catch all this sending out cases and then can make some kind of conclusions as okay, because I have met so many people are more risk taking. So I think based on my clinical experience, this is a case. Right? Yeah. And that's very different than Yeah, data driven point.

-   50:46  

Yeah. And I also think too that like, I mean, so there are there is some evidence for this in different domains, right. Some people have argued, for example, that having condoms encourages risky sexual behavior, right? You know, it allows you to do something that you probably wouldn't want to do otherwise. Right? So it's not a crazy thought. But just because it happens sometimes or in certain domains, we should be careful in very confidently predicting that it's going to happen in other domains. Right. Yes. I think it's interesting that both are people are making opposite predictions. Right. And both could be true.

-   51:25  

Right. And they are so for Coronavirus. It's so important to decide how we're going to guide as a public and the policies for the condom example. I also heard that, especially for China, when they or Asian countries when they decide whether to have those kind of education class for high school students or junior high school students right there, those kind of two conflict views. And then I think data driven to certain direction and eventually people think we'll have the education class to make it available. Actually is still better than not.

-   52:04  

Yeah. Even if so so I read a review recently that said, in general not not always, but in general, when when people are given sort of protective measures like masks and things like that, I don't know of anybody that's sensitive with mass, but in other domains, they say, yes, some people seem to respond by taking more risks, but the overall effect, the average effect, tends to be protective. And I think that's what if we're really concerned about public health, you know, the overall effect is probably what we should care about. And if we're concerned about people taking risks, we can also remind people to say, Hey, you know, just Just so you know, like, it's not 100% but I think with masks, it's weird because I don't think anybody out there thinks that a mask is 100%. Like, if we ask people on the street, do you think this mask means that there is a zero percent chance that you will get infected? I don't think I don't think people think that it's zero. Yeah, I would be surprised if many people thought it was like that.

-   53:05  

Right? I think I saw some news comparing or some articles comparing those like full mask cover your whole body whole face that we often see in those downbeat movies to talk about when do you really need over 99.9% of protection?

-   53:25  

Yeah, like Ebola virus or you know, things like,

-   53:28  

right. But anything I think it's hard to see it's 100%, or any medication and the treatment clinically, no one ever can kind of announce this is 100%. Effective.

-   53:41  

Yeah. And I think people wearing for example, homemade masks right now. They I think they understand that they're not I don't think people think it's 100%. Right. But the question really should be, Is this better than nothing? Right. It's actually a good segue into the DIY mask thing.

-   53:57  

Yeah, exactly. So Peter after people adjusted expectation, no, a lot of the data you just mentioned. Now, a lot of people cannot buy the mask. They are doing them their own, what kind of materials they can, you know, think of choosy what they should do. Any suggestions on that?

-   54:16  

Yeah. So I've got some cool data on this. And the So the interesting thing about this is so researchers after the swine flu, remember that a few years ago, right after the swine flu researchers, they noticed then there was a shortage of masks as well. And they said, hey, maybe in the future, this is going to happen again. So what we're going to do is we should test homemade materials or house household materials, how well do they work as as masks? So they actually tested this years ago, and we have their data. And so I looked through their data. There's actually two good studies on this peer review, published research.

-   54:56  

I really like researchers mindset, right. Well, I'm Something happened. Start thinking about these questions people often ask, have the research done have the data out. So in the future, we can really refer to it.

-   55:09  

And they were right. Yeah. Like, thankfully we have their data, right. Yeah. Um, okay, so first in the first study. Here's the title right there. What they had people do is they gave them cotton t shirts, and a sewing machine. And then they had them make their own masks. They look sort of like this. This is this is a mask that somebody made. And what they did is they then shot one micron sized particles at the masks. And then they said, Okay, what percentage did these homemade masks capture? And they compare that to a surgical mask. So these again, these, these are one micron large. This is about the size of anthrax, if readers remember like, few years ago, anthrax was people were scared about that. It's about the size of that. So surgical matters. captured 96% of these particles and the cotton the T shirt captured 69% of these particles. So again, not as good as a professional mask but still a lot better than nothing right 69% it's better than nothing. Now, if you but if you remember the size of the Coronavirus, it was point one two, this is one micron so Coronavirus is even smaller. So what the researchers did is they shot even smaller particles even smaller than the Coronavirus. These are point 02 these are called bacteriophage. These are different type of particle but they're smaller than the Coronavirus. It's just all that that's the important thing to know. And what they found here is that the cotton mask the homemade mass captured 50% of these very small particles, whereas a surgical mask captured almost 90% of these particles. So again, not as good as a professional mask, not nearly 100% but definitely more than zero percent. Right. Now, again, we get to this question of okay, but what about how well it's fitting on people's faces. What about when somebody actually wears the mask, so they did fit tests, like the one that I showed you before. And here it is on somebody's face. This is for particles size point 02 to one micron. So we're getting a range of particles here, including virus sized particles. And on, they do this on 21 volunteers faces, and on average, it was 50%. So it's capturing 50% of the particles. So again, better than nothing, but not 100%. Right. And the surgical mask here did a bit better than the test we showed before. These are 80% when people were actually wearing them. So again, better than nothing, but not 100%. So, here's actually a picture of another group of researchers doing the Fit Test with a homemade mask so you can see the Fit Test machine here and then you can see a volunteer wearing the homemade masks. kind of fun They also tested this with what they call a T cloth in the US, we would call that a dish towel right here that captured 60%. of particles. They also asked an interesting question is, what if you wear them for a long time? You know, they start to get wet with your breath, and does that affect how effective they are. So they had people wear these masks for three hours. So by that time, it's pretty gross and humid and wet, right? And so they compared it with before and after. Now, these again, were masks made out of dish towels. And it was 63% before and after three hours, it was 68%. So it actually became slightly more effective. And as you can, you might be able to understand this, the your intuition might, might lead you in this direction, the more water and the more particles are stuck in the mask, it actually becomes a better filter right? harder to Breathing, but a better filter, right. And as we saw before the surgical mask did better. And in this study they tested and 95 masks, which did even better, right. They also tested them on children. And they found that so on adults, while actually wearing the mask, it was 60% on adults, and about 52% on children. So other studies have found this with 95 masks, even when they're made for children's faces, they tend not to fit as well on children's faces, it's just harder to get a mass and the children are growing it's probably also harder for them to make sure that the mask is is you know, properly on the face. So Several studies have found our to our own tests have found that mass tend to work less well on children, but better than nothing, right? So if I mean if I had a child in a polluted city or you know near somebody who is sick, my mask is better than nothing, right? It's a picture of a test. We

-   1:00:00  

For children, yeah, for children the other difficult thing, not just for mask itself, it's children's behavior, because I saw some funny articles in China after the Coronavirus. Now a lot of children went back to school. But for younger children, they went to school with a yellow mask a keypad with a pink one, because this is cool.

-   1:00:24  

Yeah. It's hard to like explain these things and have them just instantly understand. Right? It'll take time, fortunately, seems like kids don't get as affected by the corona viruses as adults. Right. So these were two studies that were super helpful. But another question that people are asking is okay, so we saw cotton t shirt, and we saw a dish towel, like a towel, cotton towel. But what about all these other materials that people might have at home? Right? Well, there's another study where they said, Okay, let's look at just a bunch of different materials that people might have at home. Here's their effectiveness against one micron sized particles. This is about again about the size of anthrax. So here we have surgical mask at 97% then a vacuum cleaner bag. I know a lot of people on Twitter have been asking about these because they think well the vacuum cleaner it's got a really strong filter in it right? And they're right 95% In this study, wow. dish towel, a COTTON BLEND shirt, cotton shirt, pillowcase was 65% scarf was 2% on the bottom here was silk at 58%. So, you can see all of these materials are capturing over 50% of particles, right? This is not on people's face. This is just you know the the filtration of the materials themselves, but they also shot smaller particles. These are those point 02 micron so we're talking even smaller than the Coronavirus and you can see all the materials are less effective, but still pretty effective. So that vacuum cleaner bag that went from something like 90 95% to Now 86% will be smaller. particles, dish towel 73% COTTON BLEND t shirt 70% the scarf 49%. So still capturing a decent number decent percentage of these small particles. All right? Now, it would be super easy to look at this and say, well, we should use either the vacuum cleaner because that was super, super high, or we should use the dish towel. Problem is can I breathe through this thing, right? Because masks need to not only capture particles, but they need to be breathable. Right. And so researchers, before I get to that question, they also asked if I double layer it with effective, right and so for example, here's a single layer of dish towel. This is against one micron particles. So the single dish towel was a single layer of dish towel was 83%. A double layer was 97%. Now, it's not that much better, right? I mean considering how much harder two layers would be to breathe in 14

-   1:03:01  

Okay, right, with a T shirt, it was even smaller. So a single layer of T shirt was 69%, two layers was 71%, almost almost nothing. Same with a pillowcase. Just 1% difference. So it seems that in general, double layering is probably not worth it. Maybe not a bad idea, but it also affects readability. So the interesting thing here is that the so again, like looking at these results, you might say in vacuum cleaner or dish that one, those are the best materials. But the researchers themselves who wrote this, they actually suggested the pillowcase in the cotton t shirt instead of why, because they were the best combination of effectiveness at capturing particles, but also breathability. So here's their data on readability. So basically, this is just how hard is it? to breathe through it are actually here we have it as coded as Breathe, breathe ability. So it's easy. So thanks Over here are easier than a surgical mask in percentages. And things over on the left side here are harder than a surgical mask. So surgical mask is sort of set to the sort of baseline, right? And so pillowcase, for example, is actually easier to breathe through than a surgical mask. So is a cotton t shirt, scarf, linen, silk, and even double layer of T shirt slightly easier than a surgical mask. But remember that vacuum cleaner bag, it was almost 100% harder to breathe through that than a surgical mask. Right? And a double layer dish towel was more than 100% harder to breathe through than a surgical man. suffocate ourselves. It would be not fun, right? So it's not impossible, right? If somebody out there really wants to do a double layer of dish towel. Okay, you can do it. But the I agree with the researchers that we probably want to combine these two variables, right we want to combine effectiveness breathability so what they recommended was the pillowcase and the T shirt, which were effective at capturing particles but also very breathable. Right? So that's sort of the the bottom line on the on the DIY masks. I think the take home message there is they're effective. They're better than nothing. certain materials work better than others. But remember that they're not as good as the 95 s. But again, I don't think anybody thinks they're as good as an A 95. mask, right? So it's kind of arguing against nobody. One last thing I'll say is that after we publish this data, this post just went crazy. So many people out there were trying to make masks and they this data was, you know, we sort of took scientific research, but then made it in a way that I think people can understand and use. That was not our test. But all these people started asking about other materials. They said, What about like coffee filter was a really popular one, right or we thought about About paper towel, right? Lots of people have paper towel at home. And so there's all these other materials that people might use. And so what we've been doing recently is as smart as a social enterprise, we sell purifiers, but we don't we don't make a lot of money. It's not really our goal. So we started a crowdfunding campaign to help raise money to buy equipment, testing equipment, like they have to test more materials. And since then, we've had people donating money so we can buy materials by testing equipment, and then publish all the data so that it's open and everybody can see it. Right. So it's not it's not even behind the scientific journal paywall. It's just, it's just gonna all be out there. Right? And we've actually already started testing this material so that people can continue to donate money, please, please do we need we need more equipment if people are willing to donate $1 $5 or $10 that will go to buying buying more materials and buying testing equipment. And so probably next week, we will be publishing even more tests on more materials that we can find Including paper towels, and coffee filters.

-   1:07:03  

Great. Yes, I will, please give me the link to those forums and donate channels. I will put them all on the show notes. So people will ever they watch this YouTube video or listen to the podcast, they have a way to get to those links know how to find more information and research results.

-   1:07:25  

Yeah, awesome. Yeah. And people can also if they, and even if I'm sure we'll post links to but if you just Google smart air filters and then you know DIY mask or homemade bass, you can find any of this stuff. And then we linked to all the original research articles. If anybody wants to look up the originals, they can they can find the methods and all the data and even more fun data that obviously we don't report everything in the in the article. So there's more to be discovered.

-   1:07:51  

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Okay. So other than what you just talked about, I personally just have a side question, but I don't know. Whether you have the answer, so I'm wondering, have you ever come across any research articles or data to link between mask use or clean air or those link that to sleep, either sleep quality or anxiety about sleep or anything?

-   1:08:19  

That's really interesting. I? So the short answer is no. But I think a we could build a pretty good theoretical model of why that would be the case. Right? So we know that air pollution is linked to things that should affect sleep, right? A very simple one is how easy it is to breathe, right? And so air pollution particles will increase inflammation in our nose and in our airways. And so if I'm breathing cleaner air, my airways are going to be more open, and it's going to be easier for me to breathe. So I would imagine, I don't know of any studies, but I would imagine I would bet money that if we took people who snore a lot, and then have them breathe clean air, snoring rates would probably go down or severity would go down. I don't think that snoring would disappear because you know, even in clean faces, people still snore. But my guess is it would be less. And this was actually my experience. So I'd lived in China for about five years before I used a purifier. And then I started using a purifier, and one day I woke up, and I realized, I breathed the whole night I had breathe through my nose. Whereas all the months before that, I would wake up and I would have breathing, I would be breathing through my mouth, because my nose would be so stuffy. And as soon as I use the air purifier went away. And so I can imagine that would do it. So you have sort of like a direct link there. But then you have these sort of more indirect links like we know that air pollution affects mood. There are studies on that. We know that air pollution affects things like systemic inflammation In the body, so like how much our body has to fight off these particles and to repair some of the damage? And I would imagine that also things like blood pressure, heart rate. And so I would imagine that if these markers are improving, my guess is that would probably help us sleep a little bit better as well. So again, I don't know of any direct evidence of that. But if we could measure it very well, I would imagine it would, it would help.

-   1:10:25  

Right? I definitely know based on your personal experience, I know research about allergy and sleep. And part of that is a clean sleep environment.

-   1:10:38  

Yeah, you know, it's interesting air purifiers and allergies. That's another interesting one where I think people often get the research wrong. So oftentimes, what you'll hear what I've heard doctors say is that well, there's not really good evidence that air purifiers help with allergies. Now, I want to say if people think I'm totally biased because I have a company that sells air purifiers That's totally fine. I can totally understand that. But what I can tell you is that having looked at the studies, normally what they find, so what they do is they take people with allergies, and then they randomly assign them to use an air purifier not and then they measure things like how easy it is for them to breathe over time, or allergy symptoms, things like that. Normally what they find is effects in the direction of improvement, but usually not significant. Right? Now, that's usually because you have fairly small samples. And also because the effect of an air purifier is not that big. It helps, but it's not gonna cure your allergies, right? Especially if you're not using it, you know, all the time, right? And there's still allergens in the air. It's not going to be 100% right? But if you take a bunch of those studies and add them up, my guess is you'd find it you know and do it for longer periods of time, larger samples, things like that. It would help with allergies and that's that's what the studies are pointing to

-   1:12:00  

Yeah, great. Well, thank you very much, Thomas today for sharing all this wonderful research with us and especially to myself, I think a lot of the research are quite new to me. And a lot of questions you're answering in this presentation. Actually, I have asked those questions myself, but have no idea where to find the answer. So I think by listening to this and watching all this data, hopefully audience can feel the same that they really now know better. At least know how to choose between masks, if there's no options to buy any what to do at home, at least what material to consider.

-   1:12:38  

Yeah, that's exactly what what it was like for me when I started to get worried about air pollution. So when I was living in Beijing, it was 2013 air pollution is really bad that winter. And I wanted to know, like do air purifiers work, how do they work? What's the you know, exact percentages on this Do I need to buy? What's the difference between those expensive ones and all the other ones? And the thing is the answers are out there. Researchers have tested these questions before, but there wasn't, it was really hard to find them. Right. I had to dig and dig and find this stuff. And oftentimes, I had to do some tests myself even. And so really one of my big goals with smart air and if people are considering donating to our mask test, this is this is what you're supporting is getting answers to these questions, and also communicating it in a way that people can understand and is easily accessible. That's really that's really it. Because a lot of the answers to these quite like can mask to extra viruses, the answer is pretty simple. Right? And the data is out there. Right? Can air purifiers, lower Pm 2.5. In your home, we know the answer to this question, right? It's just oftentimes not in a convenient format. And people haven't done the sort of interpretation of the scientific research to make it easy. So I hope that smart air is helping at least in some way. That Because I found it hard to find the answers to these questions. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to put it out there so that people can do it and they can make the right decision for themselves based on the data. And that usually involves, you know, in air purifiers. It usually involves not spending $1,000 for clean air, right? Or it involves, you know, for masks, it involves doing something rather than nothing. Right?

-   1:14:20  

Yeah, and especially for Coronavirus right now, I know there's financial stress, there's house concerns. So all this information could be really helpful to guide people to the, to the right direction, or direction, at least they can consider.

-   1:14:34  

Yeah, Mm hmm. Right. Yeah.

-   1:14:36  

Great. Thank you. And thanks for smart air doing all this wonderful work.

-   1:14:42  

Yeah, thank you for having me.

-   1:14:43  

So that's a great conversation with Dr. Thomas told him about musk usage and the research behind it. Even though this episode is not directly about sleep disorders and sleep interventions. I still put it here because I think the most The shortage of Musk is a quite stressor right now. And as we all know, any life stressors right now could directly impact our sleep quality. So I really want gave this resource out to those who don't have any access to facial masks. So you have some guidance, you understand what it can do to us and what you can do for yourself, to help yourself make some masks or make decisions that really help yourself and your family stay healthy. Again, the shownotes is deepintosleep.co/episode/030. And I will put the YouTube video directly onto the show notes once it's available online. Thank you very much for listening, and welcome any questions you can ask me questions through email or just record your audio On my website under the tab, ask a shine. And next week, I will answer one of the questions I received from the audience. Look forward to seeing you all next week.

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