Ask The Psychologist Issue #48: Are There Health Issues Consistent With Wearing Masks?
The following articles should answer the question regarding health issues, related to the wearing of masks. Many articles on the Internet state there is no health risks, but the below studies provide the most accurate information I could find on the subject. Not only are they scientifically accurate, but also makes good common sense. Remember what Josh Billings stated many years ago, “Common Sense Is Instinct, And Enough Of It Is Genius”
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-harm-caused-by-masks
/ Eye on the News / Health Care
May 09 2023/ Share
Evidence continues to mount that mask mandates were perhaps the worst public-health intervention in modern American history. While concluding that wearing masks “probably makes little or no difference” in preventing the spread of viruses, a recent Cochrane review also emphasized that “more attention should be paid to describing and quantifying the harms” that may come from wearing masks. A new study from Germany does just that, and it suggests that the excess carbon dioxide breathed in by mask-wearers may have substantial ill effects on their health—and, in the case of pregnant women, their unborn children’s.
Mask-wearers breathe in greater amounts of air that should have been expelled from their bodies and released out into the open. “[A] Significant rise in carbon dioxide occurring while wearing a mask is scientifically proven in many studies,” write the German authors. “Fresh air has around 0.04% CO2,” they observe, while chronic exposure at CO2 levels of 0.3 percent is “toxic.” How much CO2 do mask-wearers breathe in? The authors write that “masks bear a possible chronic exposure to low level carbon dioxide of 1.41–3.2% CO2 of the inhaled air in reliable human experiments.”
In other words, while eight times the normal level of carbon dioxide is toxic, research suggests that mask-wearers (specifically those who wear masks for more than 5 minutes at a time) are breathing in 35 to 80 times normal levels.
The German study, a scoping review of existing research, aimed “to investigate the toxicological effects of face masks in terms of CO2 rebreathing on developing life, specifically for pregnant women, children, and adolescents.” The latter two groups, of course, have been among those most frequently subjected to mask mandates in schools, despite Covid’s low levels of risk for them and the evidence that masks don’t work.
What can breathing too much carbon dioxide do to you? The authors write that “at levels between 0.05% and 0.5% CO2,” one might experience an “increased heart rate, increased blood pressure and overall increased circulation with the symptoms of headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, dizziness, rhinitis, and dry cough.” Rates above 0.5 percent can lead to “reduced cognitive performance, impaired decision-making and reduced speed of cognitive solutions.” Beyond 1 percent, “the harmful effects include respiratory acidosis, metabolic stress, increased blood flow and decreased exercise tolerance.” Again, mask-wearers are likely breathing in CO2 levels between 1.4 percent and 3.2 percent—well above any of these thresholds. What’s more, “Testes metabolism and cell respiration have been shown to be inhibited increasingly by rising levels of CO2.”
So, high blood pressure, reduced thinking ability, respiratory problems, and reproductive concerns are among the many possible results of effectively poisoning oneself by breathing in too much carbon dioxide.
The authors write that “it is clear that carbon dioxide rebreathing, especially when using N95 masks, is above the 0.8% CO2 limit set by the US Navy to reduce the risk of stillbirths and birth defects on submarines with female personnel who may be pregnant.” In other words, mandates have forced pregnant women to wear masks resulting in levels of CO2 inhalation that would be prohibited if they were serving on a Navy submarine.
Indeed, according to the authors, there exists “circumstantial evidence that popular mask use may be related to current observations of a significant rise of 28% to 33% in stillbirths worldwide and a reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance of two full standard deviations in scores in children born during the pandemic.” They cite recent data from Australia, which “shows that lockdown restrictions and other measures (including masks that have been mandatory in Australia), in the absence of high rates of COVID-19 disease, were associated with a significant increase in stillborn births.” Meantime, “no increased risk of stillbirths was observed in Sweden,” which famously defied the public health cabal and went its own way in setting Covid policies.
As for countries where mask wearing has long been common, the authors write, “Even before the pandemic, in Asia the stillbirth rates have been significantly higher” than in Eurasia, Oceania, or North Africa.
“It has to be pointed out that this data on the toxicity of carbon dioxide on reproduction has been known for 60 years,” the authors observe. For this reason, they write, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has CO2 threshold limits of 3 percent for 15 minutes and 0.5 percent for eight hours in workplace ambient air. Yet the CDC has been perhaps the primary pusher of masks in the United States.
Nor is increased CO2 intake the only health danger that results from wearing masks. The study focused only on CO2, but the author’s note, “other noxious agents in the masks contribute to toxicological long-term effects like the inhalation of synthetic microfibers, carcinogenic compounds and volatile organic compounds.” They add, “The increased carbon dioxide content of the breathing air behind the mask may also lead to a displacement of oxygen.” Masks are also uncomfortable and unhygienic, and they profoundly compromise human social interaction.
In light of all this, it seems indefensible to mandate—or even to advise—the wearing of masks, especially among the young. The authors write, “Keeping in mind the weak antiviral mask efficacy, the general trend of forcing mask mandates even for the vulnerable subgroups is not based on sound scientific evidence and not in line with the obligation in particular to protect born or unborn children from potential harmful influences.”
Public-health officials—and the executive-branch leaders who credulously listened to them—ignored centuries of Western norms, the best medical evidence, and common sense, deciding that their own novel and evidence-free course was the one that all of society should be forced to follow. We should never again indulge such an obvious and destructive misstep.
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0061574
N95 respirator mask breathing leads to excessive carbon dioxide inhalation and reduced heat transfer in a human nasal cavity
Special Collection: Flow and the Virus
Physics of Fluids 33, 081913 (2021)
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0061574
RESEARCH ARTICLE| AUGUST 23 2021
Found in discussion part of study.
“The respirator mask restricts the ability of the exhaled air to mix with the ambient air, leading to an accumulation of CO2 inside the mask. At the end of exhalation, CO2 concentration reached 28 000 ppm, whereupon instead of inhaling fresh air containing a low CO2 concentration, the accumulated CO2 in the mask is inhaled. The stale exhaled air inside the mask is transferred back into the nasal cavity and into the lungs. At the end of inhalation, the CO2 concentration in the mask is replenished by the exhaled breath, but reaches a limit where excessive amounts escape through the gaps in the mask attachment to the face. Exposure to a CO2 concentration of 10 000 ppm for 30 min or more in a healthy adult results in respiratory acidosis.”
Facemasks and respirators are used to filter inhaled air, which may contain airborne droplets and high particulate matter (PM) concentrations. The respirators act as a barrier to the inhaled and exhaled air, which may change the nasal airflow characteristics and air-conditioning function of the nose. This study aims to investigate the nasal airflow dynamics during respiration with and without an N95 respirator driven by airflow through the nasal cavity to assess the effect of the respirator on breathing conditions during respiration. To achieve the objective of this study, transient computational fluid dynamics simulations have been utilized. The nasal geometry was reconstructed from high-resolution Computed Tomography scans of a healthy 25-year-old female subject. The species transport method was used to analyze the airflow, temperature, carbon dioxide (CO2), moisture content (H2O), and temperature distribution within the nasal cavity with and without an N95 respirator during eight consecutive respiration cycles with a tidal volume of 500 ml. The results demonstrated that a respirator caused excessive CO2 inhalation by approximately
7×
7
×
Greater per breath compared with normal breathing. Furthermore, heat and mass transfer in the nasal cavity was reduced, which influences the perception of nasal patency. It is suggested that wearers of high-efficiency masks that have minimal porosity and low air exchange for CO2 regulation should consider the amount of time they wear the mask.
Topics
Heat transfer, Hygrometry, Computer software, Porous media, Mass transfer, Computational fluid dynamics
I. INTRODUCTION
Healthcare workers and medical response teams are recommended to wear personal protective equipment while undertaking healthcare during pandemics. The N95 respirator is respiratory personal protective equipment that protects against infectious respiratory diseases, including COVID-19. N95 respirators are made of four layers, which cause resistance to inhalation and exhalation airflow. This resistance is expected to affect nasal airflow, where accumulated exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the mask region is re-inhaled. The augmentation of CO2 in the mask zone could create exposure to increased levels of CO2 in subsequent breaths that could cause adverse physiological effects, over prolonged use. This is in contrast to surgical masks, which do not affect relevant physiological changes in gas exchange under prolonged rest or brief walking.1
Light-headedness, headache, and high blood pressure2,3 are symptoms that have been observed after wearing an N95, which can be associated with shortness of fresh air for inhalation. Elisheva and Rosner4 reported adverse side effects, including headaches, rash, acne, skin breakdown, and impaired cognition in the majority of 343 healthcare professionals working in response to COVID-19. These side effects re-iterate past findings of headaches3 and adverse skin reactions, such as rashes, acne, and itching from mask use.5–7 Rebmann et al.2 investigated the effect of wearing an N95 on outcome variables for ten nurses using longitudinal analysis based on a multivariate linear regression model, and they concluded that the CO2 level increased significantly compared with baseline measures, leading to light-headedness and high blood pressure.
Atangana et al.8 assessed the relationship between wearing a facemask and CO2 inhalation and recommended a full mask respirator due to better air circulation compared with other respirators and facemasks. Mardimae et al.9 demonstrated that a modified N95 mask could administer clinically equivalent high fractional inspired CO2 concentrations to a no rebreathing mask while maintaining its filtration and isolation capabilities.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) studies have assessed the CO2 distribution in the mask, which showed that CO2 was trapped within the mask region.10–14 These studies investigated the effect of N95 on CO2 levels around the mask region, but the airflow from inside the respiratory airway was excluded. Zhang et al.13 included the upper respiratory airway, which demonstrated excessive CO2 inhalation in every breathing cycle, and that the presence of a respirator may affect the respiratory airflow through nasal breathing. The air-conditioning function of the nasal cavity includes heat and mass exchange between the mucosal wall and airflow,15,16, which primarily occurs in the anterior region of the nasal cavity between the nasal valve and the turbinates.17,18 Lindermann et al.19 demonstrated that the mucosal surface temperature varies during different respiration phases. However, previous CFD nasal air-conditioning studies have been performed as a steady-state analysis.20,21 During respiration, it is expected that warm exhaled air accumulates within the mask and this is returned to the nasal cavity during inspiration, altering the typical heat and mass exchange between the fresh air and mucosal wall.
Dbouk and Drikakis22 investigated the transmission of respiratory droplets through and around a facemask filter using CFD simulations. The results demonstrated that wearing a facemask reduced the droplet travel distance to half, and the mask efficiency varied in different coughing situations. Based on the results of this study, which showed that several droplets could be transmitted meters away from the subject, it was recommended that social distancing is essential during the pandemic. The same authors23 proposed a novel three-dimensional multiphase Eulerian–Lagrangian CFD solver to examine the impacts of weather conditions on airborne virus transmission. They also concluded that steady-state relationships induce significant errors and must not be applied in unsteady saliva droplet evaporation.
This study investigated the effects of an N95 respirator on nasal respiration by quantifying the breathing condition during respiration, and its effect on the nasal cavity anatomy and physiology. A human nasal cavity geometry fitted with an N95 respirator was used to explore the respiration flow behavior, and a respiration cycle with a tidal volume of 500 ml was modeled for eight consecutive cycles. A mucosal sub-wall model was applied to allow the analysis of heat and mass transfer between the mucus and inhaled air, thereby producing a net mucosal wall temperature change and humidity changes in the air. The air was treated as a multi-species gas that included water vapor and CO2. These species were monitored to track the amounts passing through the nostrils during respiration.
II. METHOD
A. CFD model creation
A high-resolution Computed Tomography (CT) scan of a healthy 25-year-old female with no history of previous sinonasal pathology, trauma or surgery, and no anatomical abnormalities was used to create the nasal airway computational model. A Siemens Dual Source CT Scanner (Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany) was used for the scanning, with the following imaging parameters: 0.39 × 0.39 mm pixel size, 512 × 512 pixel image dimensions, and a slice thickness of 0.6 mm. Before the CT scan, written informed consent was obtained from the subject.
The 3D model reconstruction of the nasal airway from the CT scan was carried out using 3D Slicer® segmentation software. The paranasal sinuses do not affect the nasal airflow significantly;24,25 hence, the frontal, maxillary, ethmoid and sphenoid sinuses were removed from the model. To mimic the effects of wearing an N95 respirator, a 3D model of an N95 model was imported into Ansys SpaceClaim®, positioned and aligned over the human face. The respirator covered the nostril, and a gap between the N95 mask and human face was considered to represent the natural leakage of a non-fully sealed respirator. Vaseline is usually used to fully seal the N95 mask;26 however, this is uncommon and the respirator is not fully sealed most of the time.
B. Meshing and boundary conditions
The geometry of the face was retained and an enclosed hemisphere representing the outer surrounding air (Fig. 1) was constructed in front of the face. A poly-hexcore mesh was generated using Ansys Fluent 2020R2. Mesh independence analysis was performed and checked by plotting velocity contours across the nasopharynx region for three different meshes following Inthavong et al.27 The final optimized mesh contained 1.5 mil poly-hexcore cells, which contained five prism layers on nasal cavity walls and four prism layers on respirator and face surfaces. This had a total of 6.99 × 106 faces and 5.1 × 106 nodes (Fig. 2), and mesh independence testing results are shown in supplementary material S1. The advantage of poly-hexcore meshing is that it uses fewer elements, approximately
3.5×
3.5
×
fewer than tetrahedral meshing with the same size functions. To accurately capture the boundary layer profile, five prism layers with a first-layer thickness of 0.06 mm were used in the nasal cavity. Four prism layers were used on each side of the respirator surface (interior and exterior) and face surface to capture the flow complexities through and around the mask [Fig. 2(d)]. A body of influence with sizing of 0.8 mm was used around the nasal cavity and respirator to create a local mesh refinement and avoid a larger mesh size in these regions.
FIG. 1. VIEW LARGE DOWNLOAD SLIDE
Nasal cavity geometry and computational domain. (a) Anatomical regions of the nasal cavity. (b) Nostrils plane, which is used to monitor the flow properties during both inhalation and exhalation. (c) Computational domain and boundary conditions.
FIG. 2. VIEW LARGEDOWNLOAD SLIDE
(a) Face and nasal cavity. (b) Zoom view of nasal cavity meshing. (c) Cross-sectional plane in the middle nasal cavity. (d) Sagittal cross-sectional plane in the mid-right nasal passage with a magnified view showing the prism layers used at the respirator and face surfaces.
The exterior surface of the domain was set to atmospheric pressure, and respiration was initiated by setting a defined mass flow rate at the exit of nasopharynx extension [Fig. 1(c)]. The respiratory cycle was simplified to pure sine waves based on the measured physiology data from Benchetrit et al.28 and used in Calmet et al.,29 allowing a simple method for describing the tidal volume, breathing periods, and periodicity, e.g.,
A
sin
(
π
(
t
−
C
)
B
)
.
(1)
For inhalation, the amplitude
A=5.832×
10
−4
A
=
5.832
×
10
−
4
kg/s and period B = 1.65 s, while the periodicity for multiple breathing cycles is
C=4(n−1)
C
=
4
(
n
−
1
)
s, where n is the respiration cycle number. For exhalation,
A=4.0945×
10
−4
A
=
4.0945
×
10
−
4
kg/s; B = 2.35 s; and
C=(1.65+4(n−1))
C
=
(
1.65
+
4
(
n
−
1
)
)
s. This produces a tidal volume of 500 ml, where the inhalation period is 1.65 s and the exhalation period is 2.35 s. The solution was initialized at time t = 0 s with steady-state settings, and therefore, we exclude the first inhalation phase to avoid startup effects from the analysis. This ensures that the respiration results represent continuous breathing.
Simulations for breathing without a respirator were performed for two respiration cycles, while breathing with a respirator was carried out for eight respiration cycles to investigate the cumulative impact of the respirator on the inhaled airflow. The first four cycles used a time step of
Δt=0.25×
10
−3
Δ
t
=
0.25
×
10
−
3
s, taking the simulation time to 17.65 s. The final four cycles were modeled for evaluating the inhaled gas mixtures only. Larger time steps were used based on their ability to predict similar values as the original time step, evaluated over the peak inhalation period between 12.5 and 13 s.
Figure 3(a) shows the assigned flow respiratory profile with the first four cycles modeled with
Δt=0.25×
10
−3
Δ
t
=
0.25
×
10
−
3
s, and the last four cycles modeled with
Δt=1×
10
−2
Δ
t
=
1
×
10
−
2
s, where Fig. 3(b) shows that the latter time step size was the most efficient time step while maintaining the same results. These time-steps are consistent with previous respirator CFD studies10–14 that used
Δt=5×
10
−2
Δ
t
=
5
×
10
−
2
s to perform transient respirator breathing simulations.
FIG. 3. VIEW LARGEDOWNLOAD SLIDE
(a) Respiration cycle mass flow rate profile assigned to the nasopharyngeal. (b) Time step sensitivity analysis. Average CO2 concentration passing through the monitoring plane for different Δt (ms).
Monitored points of interest were selected at the beginning, peak, and end of inspiration and expiration cycles. Additional points before and after peak inspiration and expiration were included to demonstrate the acceleration and deceleration around the peak. Equal time intervals of 0.4 s between each point were selected.
The mask zone was assumed as a porous medium with a porosity of 0.88, and a viscous resistance coefficient of
1.12×
10
10
1.12
×
10
10
m−2 based on Zhang et al.13 The filtration material of the N95 respirator is a poly-propylene fabric that has a low thermal conductivity, which varies between 0.11 and 0.22 W/m K as reported by Patti et al.30 Thus, N95 mask walls were considered adiabatic. A plane was created at the nostril opening and oriented normal to the flow to monitor the gas mixtures entering and existing the nasal cavity during respiration [Fig. 1(b)].
C. Numerical setup
Airflow modeling was performed assuming a transient, laminar flow through the nasal airway, mimicking a full breath cycle using the commercial CFD code, Ansys Fluent 2020R2 (ANSYS Inc., Canonsburg, PA, US). Laminar flow characteristics were found to be dominant for flows at 15 l/min.31 While some turbulence will occur at peak flows of approximately 30 l/min at the nasopharynx, the effect is expected to be small. The impingement of the air jet onto the mask surface can be categorized based on the critical Reynolds number, as suggested by Gardon et al.32 We considered the maximum velocity at the nostril and the nostril diameter, which gives a Reynolds number less than 1000, which is classified as a laminar jet.
The ambient air temperature was set to 20 °C, while that of the exhaled air was set to 36 °C. The exhaled air was assumed to be fully saturated and has a CO2 mass fraction of 36 000 ppm.33 The ambient air relative humidity and CO2 mass fraction were 30% and 385 ppm, respectively.33 The governing equations can be expressed in the form of the following transport equation:
∂ρϕ
∂t
+∇·(ρΦv)=∇(
Γ
ϕ
∇ϕ)+
S
ϕ
.
∂
ρ
ϕ
∂
t
+
∇
·
(
ρ
Φ
v
)
=
∇
(
Γ
ϕ
∇
ϕ
)
+
S
ϕ
.
(2)
The generalized scalar
ϕ
ϕ
, diffusion coefficient
Γ
ϕ
Γ
ϕ
, and source term
S
ϕ
S
ϕ
for each governing equation are defined in Table I.
TABLE I.
Summary of governing equations.
| Equation | ϕϕ | SϕSϕ | ΓϕΓϕ |
| continuity | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| x momentum | U | −∂p∂x +∂∂x (μ∂U∂x )+∂∂y (μ∂U∂x )+∂∂z (μ∂U∂x )−∂p∂x+∂∂x(μ∂U∂x)+∂∂y(μ∂U∂x)+∂∂z(μ∂U∂x) | μ |
| y momentum | V | −∂p∂y +∂∂x (μ∂V∂y )+∂∂y (μ∂V∂y )+∂∂z (μ∂V∂y )−∂p∂y+∂∂x(μ∂V∂y)+∂∂y(μ∂V∂y)+∂∂z(μ∂V∂y) | μ |
| z momentum | W | −∂p∂z +∂∂x (μ∂W |
Addendum : Watch Stephen Petty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3dnkbKoj4A on the science of why masks never worked.
Stephen E. Petty, PE, CIH, CSP
Stephen E. Petty, P.E., C.I.H., C.S.P. – EES Group, Inc. September 4, 2021. Concepts of Industrial Hygiene. Exposure / PPE / Warnings.“Covid virus Aerosols suspended in the air for hours are 1000 times smaller than the size of a cross section of a human hair”.
WHY ARE AEROSOLS
SO IMPORTANT?
- Aerosols (very small particles – <5 microns) can stay suspended for hours to days.
- Since they stay suspended for so long, they can actually accumulate in concentration in indoor air rather than dropping out if you assumed they were droplets.
- This effectively renders the 6’ rule useless. This also renders masks essentially useless; they do not filter out aerosols and they cannot be fitted (gaps around the edges).
–
SMALL PARTICLES
Bart P. Billings,Ph.D.
COL SCNG-SC, Military Medical Directorate (Ret.)
Licensed Clinical Psychologist CA PSY 7656
Licensed Marriage, Family Therapist CA LMFT 4888
-Director/Founder International Military & Civilian Combat Stress Conference
-Initial Enlisted Ranks and Retired as Medical Service Corps Officer with a total of 34 years in US Army
-Recipient of the 2014 Human Rights Award from Citizens Commission on Human Rights International & The University Of Scranton “Frank O’Hara Award” in 2016.
bartbillings@yahoo.com
http://bartpbillings.com (“Invisible Scars” & “Unhealthy Eating …” Books Website)
www.combatstress.bizhosting.com (Combat Stress Conference website)
Cell 760 500-5040
Ph 760 438-2788
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