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Latest Prevention & Wellness News<\/h3>\n
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TUESDAY, Sept. 22, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
Don’t fret about whether that fabric mask you made on your sewing machine protects against the spread of COVID-19<\/a> as well as the face masks sold in stores, new research reassures.<\/p>\n Taher Saif, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, examined the effectiveness of common household fabrics in blocking droplets.<\/p>\n “Our goal is to show that many common fabrics exploit the trade-off between breathability and efficiency of blocking droplets — large and small,” Saif said in a university news release.<\/p>\n The team tested breathability and droplet-blocking of 11 common household fabrics. The fabrics ranged from new and used garments, quilted cloths, bedsheets and dishcloths.<\/p>\n “Testing the breathability of these fabrics was the easy part,” Saif said. “We simply measured the rate of airflow through the fabric. Testing the droplet-blocking ability is a bit more complicated.”<\/p>\n Researchers filled the nozzle of an inhaler with distilled water seeded with fluorescent particles that were the size of coronavirus particles.<\/p>\n The inhaler forced the water through the nozzle and made droplets that collected on a dish in front of the inhaler. To test the material they placed it over the collection dish, then repeated the process with different materials.<\/p>\n “We count the number of nanoparticles landing on the dish using a high-resolution confocal microscope. We can then use the ratio of the number collected with and without the fabric to give us a measure of droplet-blocking efficiency,” Saif explained.<\/p>\n The droplets left the inhaler at about 17 meters per second. Droplets from speaking, coughing<\/a> and sneezing<\/a> have speeds in the range of 10 to 40 meters per second.<\/p>\n “We found that all of the fabrics tested are considerably effective at blocking the 100-nanometer particles carried by high-velocity droplets similar to those that may be released by speaking, coughing<\/a> and sneezing<\/a>, even as a single layer,” Saif said.<\/p>\n “With two or three layers, even the more permeable fabrics, such as T-shirt cloth, achieve droplet-blocking efficiency that is similar to that of a medical mask, while still maintaining comparable or better breathability,” he said.<\/p>\n The report was published recently in the journal Extreme Mechanics Letters<\/i>.<\/p>\n — Steven Reinberg<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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