The Four Percent
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In recent weeks as the coronavirus has been resurgent in many parts of the country, experts and politicians alike have implored people to protect themselves and others by always wearing a face mask in public.
Does that apply when you have to be out in the gusting wind and driving rain of a tropical storm? Our health columnist Tara Parker-Pope says, probably not: Face masks aren’t as effective when they are wet.
For one thing, it’s much harder to breathe through a wet mask than a dry one, Ms. Parker-Pope notes. And on top of that, a moist or wet mask doesn’t filter as well as a dry mask. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends mask-wearing in general, says they should not be worn when doing things that may get the mask wet.
It doesn’t take a tropical storm to drench a mask, of course. They can become soaked with condensation from your breath or sweat from your face, and some people think of wetting them deliberately to cool off in hot weather. But the harm done is the same, wherever the moisture comes from.
A paper surgical mask that gets soaked should probably be discarded, Ms. Parker-Pope advises, but a cloth mask can be washed, dried and re-used.
When rain is coming down in buckets, social distancing is not likely to be a problem, and any viral particles exhaled by an infected person probably would be quickly diluted by gusting wind and rain. So there is little need to wear a mask out in a rainstorm, Ms. Parker-Pope notes: “In fact, you should take it off and keep it dry, so if you need to duck into a store to wait out the storm, you have a dry mask to wear indoors.”
Reporting was contributed by Johnny Diaz, Patrick J. Lyons, Tara Parker-Pope, Rick Rojas, Daniel Victor, Will Wright, Alan Yuhas and Mihir Zaveri
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