First of all: Hello
and welcome!
I hope you and all
your loved ones are well and you are holding up during these crazy times.
I have spent the
last few days researching the best materials for DIY masks, because of an
offhand comment my mom made. She told me that seamstresses in Vienna have been
asked to manufacture masks and she forwarded me an article from our local
newspaper about somebody making sneezing shields (basically ractangles with
ties) to protect others from your germs. But it seems nobody is actually making
anything to specifically protect you against germs from other people.
As it happens I work with nanopowders in my job (I study
material science and work in a lab part time) so I have used quite a few FFP masks. So as a had been sewing
quite a bit to destress (I like to make my own clothes as a hobby) and had a
FFP2 mask lying around as well, I thought that there had to be a way to make
something similar yourself. It's not a good feeling being dependent on stock
coming back. In this case DIY is the way to go.
Another benefit of
the masks that you will be able to make with these tutorials is that they
are washable and thus reusable! They need to be washed after
every use obviously (hopefully preaching to the choir here..) - please don't
leave them lying around and then put them back on..
But of course masks
are not only about being the right shape, the have to be made of the right
materials to stop particles from coming in, while still being breathable. The
trickiest part of a mask is making sure that there is no leakage around the
nose, because bypassing the filtering mechanism would defeat the purpose
of a mask . Additionally, if the filter material is too hard to breath through
the pressure from your lungs will lift the mask away from your face while
breathing out and germs can get into your lungs when you breath in. And that's
not even taking into account the fact that if you have trouble breathing in and
out you will get dizzy or panicked.
So a mask has to be
comfortable and breathable, while still filtering out germs.
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