12 ms·

Possible toxicity of chronic CO2 exposure associated with face mask use

91 points by andrenth 3y ago

tomrod 3y ago
Despite the obviously charged assertion the authors make, I believe this is a good topic to discuss now that the weight of the pandemic is complete. You don't change emergency management plans in the middle of an emergency. We can and should question our approaches, extracting global principles that can be used next time this happens. Similar topics we should rigorously evaluate include FDA and CDC policies, but those are outside scope of the article. I respect the authors' asking the question, but think their narrative is a bit weak / not tied down sufficiently to make a strong claim based solely on literature review. For example: they raise the question of increases in stillborn births and then cite a 3X increase in stillbirths among studied women versus the population rate. Without additional facts, that looks potentially damning to mask wearing during a pandemic driven by a respiratory virus. What is less clear is how the accounting for observed versus actual is performed. Similar to crime statistics, the count of incidence is biased by several positive and negative factors, and stillbirths are not always captured. What _was_ observed was a significant increase in stillbirths due to COVID-19 (especially the Delta variant, which to be fair the authors mention).
- frankreyes 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Good thing that since then we've gathered extensive evidence supporting their effectiveness. Not that it should really surprise anyone. Putting literally anything in front of our virus spewing face holes helps people avoid getting sick which is why children are taught to vampire cough/sneeze. The crook of our arms aren't filtering viruses like an N95 mask would but somehow it still helps.
    - frankreyes 3y ago
      > N95 Did you read the article? No you didn't. >>> But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks? “Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson. >>> Do you think that COVID is the first virus ever to come to humanity? Do you think that nobody ever thought about the effectiveness of face masks? Do you think that somehow face masks lost effectiveness after 2020 but before they were effective? No. No. No. Scientists knew all along that face masks didn't work. Edit: >>> Compared to masks, N95 respirators conferred superior protection against CRI (...) and laboratory-confirmed bacterial (...), but not viral infections or ILI ...[influenza-like illness] <<< COVID-19 is a virus, and an ILI. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747
      - emj 3y ago
        > Scientists knew all along that face masks didn't work. No. Masks were not mandatory here [1], they were not even recommended in the beginning. Later masks were recommended [2] in public transport during rush hours during a 6 month period in 2021. The reasoning for not recommending masks in the beginning was that there were too little data supporting the effectiveness of masks. So scientist did not "know" for certain. I am not sure we can discuss this issue yet, there are still too many with non scientific agenda engaged in the debate. [1] Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic#Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19... [2] EDIT: I said mandatory, it was not.
        frankreyes 3y ago
        I gave scientific evidence of both and after studies that agreed each other, but you insist of spinning this in terms of politics... When actions contradict scientific evidence it's all about politics, no disagreement there. In your example of Sweden, I'd say it's a prisoner's dilemma politicians are forced to follow suit on what other countries are doing. It happened in my country that the National Health Minister had to resign under pressure of ineptitude, not following international practices, and corruption during pandemic. But your statement about evidence, it's simply not true. Go back and read one more time my two scientific pieces of evidence. Here there are again: Before: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747 After: https://archive.is/sWXis https://archive.is/sWXis
- westcort 3y ago
  An essentially no-risk intervention plausibly reduces infection risk and all of a sudden the bar of evidence to practice basic hygiene ratchets up to randomized phase 3 studies. Meanwhile, the same people will cite this preclinical, speculative, provocation of a paper and say masking is murder. Look at Japan’s experience with COVID. Look at the United States. That’s epidemiological data. Look at how elastomeric masks reduced TB infection rates to nil at the Texas Center for Infectious Disease. Masks (of any type) don’t work? That’s a political slogan, not evidence.
wildrhythms 3y ago
Someone can correct me, but is this paper really making the claim that wearing masks a contributing factor to stillbirth rates in Asia? >Other cultures have been wearing face masks long before COVID [[157]]. The prepandemic face mask wearing habits of such countries are not comparable to the pandemic face mask wearing requirements, but scientific data supports our hypotheses from sections 4.1. and. 4.2. Even before the pandemic, in Asia the stillbirth rates have been significantly higher compared to e.g. Eurasia, Oceania or North Africa Also, the authors don't explain how pre-pandemic mask wearing is different than pandemic mask wearing.
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  > Also, the authors don't explain how pre-pandemic mask wearing is different than pandemic mask wearing. Frequency and duration are one difference. My understanding is that pre-pandemic Asian mask wearing is generally limited to the time a person was ill, not months at a time for 8+ hours a day.
VLM 3y ago
[flagged]
- 0x486566e7279 3y ago
  If the conclusions about masks is this study are true, that means most indoor spaces and just being around gas powered devices for the same time periods, or being in your car with 3 other people is dangerous to your health. Most places that are not outside away from a co2 source, that do not have high air exchange rates have high co2 concentrations.
- tomrod 3y ago
  > This is politically unacceptable and only good news is permitted about masks and vaccines and so forth. Groupthink is the only think. I'm sorry you feel that way, VLM. I'm a proponent for masks from first principles, and am more than willing to update my priors when good data is presented. The stillbirth rate is definitely concerning. COVID-19 increase to the stillbirth rate is also concerning. Right now, causality of COVID-19 is observed, and mask-induced CO2 poisoning is hypothesized in relation to COVID-19 adjacent populations. By a way of inviting mindful conversation: the key for not falling down the rabbit hole of thinking everyone else but myself is a sheep is recognizing that people can have opinions, data can be biased, and we must strive for rigor. Works like a charm and I highly recommend it.
- dang 3y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: this has apparently been a problem for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886523 (July 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14396344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14396344 (May 2017) I appreciate your good comments, but bad comments cause more damage than good comments add value. If you'd please review the rules and stick to them from now on, that would be good. I don't want to ban you!
petesergeant 3y ago
> Nor is it the first time the authors of the review have claimed face masks could have harmful effects. Several of the authors speculated in [OP ARTICLE] that masks might have caused stillbirths and other health issues. But this was an extrapolation based on studies exposing animals to carbon dioxide — and ignored the fact that masks don’t increase levels of the gas in humans in any clinically meaningful way. The Daily Mail nevertheless covered the paper in a story with an alarming headline, screenshots of which have been widely shared on social media. https://www.factcheck.org/2023/04/scicheck-masking-has-minimal-effects-on-respiratory-system-does-not-cause-long-covid/ https://www.factcheck.org/2023/04/scicheck-masking-has-minim...
- foobarbecue 3y ago
  [EDIT: I was wrong -- the fact check also explictly references the article being discussed here] This is about a different article, right? Fact check is on https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1125150 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1125150 but the article we're discussing here is https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14117 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14117
  - magicalist 3y ago
    > This is about a different article, right? "Several of the authors speculated in a review published in March..." is referring to this article.
    - foobarbecue 3y ago
      Ah, you are correct, sorry about that. I shouldn't try to follow this stuff on a phone...
  - petesergeant 3y ago
    I've made my comment a little clearer, thanks
DoreenMichele 3y ago
There is a possible negative impact risk by imposing extended mask mandates especially for vulnerable subgroups. Circumstantial evidence exists that extended mask use may be related to current observations of stillbirths and to reduced verbal motor and overall cognitive performance in children born during the pandemic. A need exists to reconsider mask mandates.
jandrewrogers 3y ago
The toxicity of chronic exposure to elevated CO2 levels has long been a topic of interest related to climate change for the reason that we could plausibly reach levels of clinical significance over the next 100 years. Interesting to see it arise in a different context.
- Rhapso 3y ago
  Yeah and it is largely ignored. It's developmental problems in high c02 atmosphere that really scares me. Adults handle temporary or even extended exposure well, but we don't have studies about extended c02 for kids, and there are no ways to ethically get them.
  - hedora 3y ago
    I really want a CO2 scrubber for my house. Ideally, it'd fix the CO2 into biologically inert carbon bricks that I would dump in household waste, or some other convenient long-term storage. Given how well solar panels have taken off, I suspect this is more likely to actually work than industrial scale carbon capture. For one thing, houses have highly concentrated CO2 levels vs. the atmosphere. For another, there are a dozen simple carbon capture technologies in development that would work fine at house scale, but all are perpetually 5-10 years from reaching industrial scale. Since I'm talking about a luxury good, it could follow the Tesla model of using wealthy early adopters to subsidize the development of more efficient products down the line.
- hollerith 3y ago
  Do you claim to know that current CO2 levels aren't causing human disease?
- clnq 3y ago
  The CO2 levels in masks are much higher than in outside air. Even if CO2 in our air has risen from around 280 ppm to 440 ppm since the pre-industrial times, CO2 concentrations in masks are at least one order of magnitude higher. My CO2 meter maxes out at 5000 ppm pretty quickly in an N95 mask. Studies show the CO2 concentration after an hour of N95 face mask wear can be significantly above 8000 ppm, even as high as 30000 ppm [0][1]. People wearing these masks for many hours a day are likely the best in vivo examples of what increased CO2 concentrations in air does to a person. Until recently, we used to think that even such high concentrations did nothing. [2] Still, I do feel the impact on my focus and mental clarity when CO2 is above 2000 ppm. Not N=1 as other people speak about noticing the same when they buy air quality monitors, even on HN. It feels intuitive that chronic exposure would decrease our mental sharpness, if not through permanent damage, then at least through the immediate, direct effects. They would, however, be ongoing if the atmospheric CO2 rose significantly and permanently. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-CO2-levels-between-no-mask-KN95-respirator-and-JustAir-All-differences_fig5_350903274 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-CO2-levels-betwe... [1] posted article [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20420727/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20420727/
orwin 3y ago
I mean, if this is true, we have to quickly prevent gas stove as well as gas and oil heating to be added to home units. We also have to say to women to avoid barbecue afternoon when pregnant.
- foobarbecue 3y ago
  Maybe you're joking, but the bbq is acute exposure and the article focuses on chronic exposure. As for heating, if your heater puts your indoor CO2 above 0.5% then you are above the NIOSH / OSHA limits and should get it fixed. Article says measurements inside masks read 1 to 3%. Incidentally, bad indoor ventilation is an increasingly recognized health risk.
  - orwin 3y ago
    What, up to 3%? i missed that, but if true, that's a huge issue. Some woodworkers use way more airtight masks 4 to 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. If true, those concentration levels are criminal and I expect a lot of construction companies (and sawmills, and papermills) to get sued for damage.
    - foobarbecue 3y ago
      You missed it? See the first sentence of the results section, table 1, and ... the rest of the paper. I looked into some of the refs in table 1 and it seems they are being misrepresented, mostly because Kisielinski et al are acting like this is the concentration during inhalation when in the 2 papers I looked at it was average over time. Since exhaled breath has several percent, I think you really need to be able to resolve concentration over time and look at the inhale, otherwise the data is useless.
    - throwaway22032 3y ago
      Woodworking masks have exhalation valves.
rrock 3y ago
3% CO2 from mask wearing? I doubt it. I recently needed to measure 5% CO2, and I had to hold my breath to near-passout levels to reach 5% on the monitor. There’s no way that I could tolerate 3% for any length of time. More likely these authors cherry-picked studies with typos in them.
- foobarbecue 3y ago
  Seems like the key thing would be to measure the concentration under mask during inhaling vs exhaling. Exhaled breath has many % CO2. The article references a whole table of articles measuring CO2 under masks. I haven't taken the time to check if they separate exhale vs inhale but would be curious to know.
  - foobarbecue 3y ago
    I checked Roberge et al 2010 and it seems they don't separate inhalation from exhalation in the gas measurements under the mask. I checked Sinkule et al 2012 and it's quite hard to tell how the review got those numbers from that paper. Might check more when I have time later.
  - im3w1l 3y ago
    Just thinking about the numbers. Exhaled air has 4% CO2, while fresh air has 0.04%. But if you inhale air with 3% CO2 that should add to those 4% yielding 7% exhale. Now, in order to get 3% CO2 in your inhale this would mean that you would have to breathe in 42% stale air (with 7% CO2) mixed with 58% fresh air (~0 CO2). I wonder if this 42-58 mix is plausible.
    - kadoban 3y ago
      That would mean that the volume of gas trapped in a mask is 42% of lung capacity? Seems extremely implausible to me.
      - im3w1l 3y ago
        A typical breath is much less than full lung capacity, but even then I don't think it adds up.
niyumard 3y ago
[dead]
camgunz 3y ago
I had a more thoughtful and charitable post written up, but I reconsidered. What I have instead now is: if you're gonna say not even medical staff like surgeons should wear masks and that they're responsible for millions of stillbirths, you gotta do better than a survey of iffy CO2 levels under mask experiments and some hysterics about submarine CO2 levels. You need to measure blood levels. Like, if I were a researcher who wanted to get onto conservative media, this is the paper I'd write.
- Llamamoe 3y ago
  The whole publication is a joke. It goes on and on about breathing "2.8–3.2% carbon dioxide" when mask dead space constitutes maybe 15-30% of human tidal volume. At rest. And I'm pretty sure "2.8-3.2%" is a cherrypicked datapoint, other studies report lower concentrations. Realistically, all of this is less of an issue than classroom CO2 exposure over a schoolday but nobody's acting outraged about that one for some reason.
westcort 3y ago
Even with no mandate, masks alongside other factors, helped reduce COVID infection rates and mortality in Japan [1]. Meanwhile, this article is grasping for a mechanism of toxicity when no epidemiological evidence of toxicity exists, and masks are used occupationally by millions of workers daily. There is evidence from a dedicated infectious disease hospital that elastomeric masks prevent transmission of illness: —In a dedicated TB hospital, they have used elastomeric half-face respirators with N95 filter cartridges since 1995. The filters only need to be changed once per year. —Before implementing these filters, they only used surgical masks that resulted in up to 50% of their staff becoming TST positive and 1-2% with TB disease. —Since they started using the half-face respirators, they have not had a single TST conversion. With a plausible mechanism (filtration), no evidence of harm, and some evidence of benefit with certain forms of masking, maybe what is really needed is a risk:benefit calculation. An essentially no-risk intervention plausibly reduces infection risk and all of a sudden the bar of evidence to practice basic hygiene ratchets up to randomized phase 3 studies. Meanwhile, the same people will cite this preclinical, speculative, provocation of a paper and say masking is murder. Maybe there is something deeper behind this? People don’t like government mandates and don’t want to be told what to do in general. Individualism in contrast with the collectivist self-perception that is more pervasive in Japan may be a more important factor than evidence here. This observation will anger people because they want to believe their decisions are based on evidence, when they are really driven by psychology. [1] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/982234 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/982234 [2] https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25275/reusable-elastomeric-respirators-in-health-care-considerations-for-routine-and https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25275/reusable-ela... (pages 106 to 107)
wkat4242 3y ago
One of the things I wonder about is the microplastic fibers ending up in our lungs. Sure, medical professionals have been wearing them for years. But they haven't been reusing the same mask for days, crumpled up in pockets and disintegrated to the point of getting fluffy. I wonder what that will do for long-term health effects. But I guess at that time there was no time to factor that in as any results of long term research would have come after the pandemic anyway.

91 points by andrenth 3y ago

Despite the obviously charged assertion the authors make, I believe this is a good topic to discuss now that the weight of the pandemic is complete. You don't change emergency management plans in the middle of an emergency. We can and should question our approaches, extracting global principles that can be used next time this happens. Similar topics we should rigorously evaluate include FDA and CDC policies, but those are outside scope of the article. I respect the authors' asking the question, but think their narrative is a bit weak / not tied down sufficiently to make a strong claim based solely on literature review. For example: they raise the question of increases in stillborn births and then cite a 3X increase in stillbirths among studied women versus the population rate. Without additional facts, that looks potentially damning to mask wearing during a pandemic driven by a respiratory virus. What is less clear is how the accounting for observed versus actual is performed. Similar to crime statistics, the count of incidence is biased by several positive and negative factors, and stillbirths are not always captured. What _was_ observed was a significant increase in stillbirths due to COVID-19 (especially the Delta variant, which to be fair the authors mention).

frankreyes 3y ago
[flagged]
- autoexec 3y ago
  Good thing that since then we've gathered extensive evidence supporting their effectiveness. Not that it should really surprise anyone. Putting literally anything in front of our virus spewing face holes helps people avoid getting sick which is why children are taught to vampire cough/sneeze. The crook of our arms aren't filtering viruses like an N95 mask would but somehow it still helps.
  - frankreyes 3y ago
    > N95 Did you read the article? No you didn't. >>> But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks? “Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson. >>> Do you think that COVID is the first virus ever to come to humanity? Do you think that nobody ever thought about the effectiveness of face masks? Do you think that somehow face masks lost effectiveness after 2020 but before they were effective? No. No. No. Scientists knew all along that face masks didn't work. Edit: >>> Compared to masks, N95 respirators conferred superior protection against CRI (...) and laboratory-confirmed bacterial (...), but not viral infections or ILI ...[influenza-like illness] <<< COVID-19 is a virus, and an ILI. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747
    - emj 3y ago
      > Scientists knew all along that face masks didn't work. No. Masks were not mandatory here [1], they were not even recommended in the beginning. Later masks were recommended [2] in public transport during rush hours during a 6 month period in 2021. The reasoning for not recommending masks in the beginning was that there were too little data supporting the effectiveness of masks. So scientist did not "know" for certain. I am not sure we can discuss this issue yet, there are still too many with non scientific agenda engaged in the debate. [1] Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic#Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19... [2] EDIT: I said mandatory, it was not.
      - frankreyes 3y ago
        I gave scientific evidence of both and after studies that agreed each other, but you insist of spinning this in terms of politics... When actions contradict scientific evidence it's all about politics, no disagreement there. In your example of Sweden, I'd say it's a prisoner's dilemma politicians are forced to follow suit on what other countries are doing. It happened in my country that the National Health Minister had to resign under pressure of ineptitude, not following international practices, and corruption during pandemic. But your statement about evidence, it's simply not true. Go back and read one more time my two scientific pieces of evidence. Here there are again: Before: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747 After: https://archive.is/sWXis https://archive.is/sWXis
westcort 3y ago
An essentially no-risk intervention plausibly reduces infection risk and all of a sudden the bar of evidence to practice basic hygiene ratchets up to randomized phase 3 studies. Meanwhile, the same people will cite this preclinical, speculative, provocation of a paper and say masking is murder. Look at Japan’s experience with COVID. Look at the United States. That’s epidemiological data. Look at how elastomeric masks reduced TB infection rates to nil at the Texas Center for Infectious Disease. Masks (of any type) don’t work? That’s a political slogan, not evidence.

wildrhythms 3y ago

Someone can correct me, but is this paper really making the claim that wearing masks a contributing factor to stillbirth rates in Asia? >Other cultures have been wearing face masks long before COVID [[157]]. The prepandemic face mask wearing habits of such countries are not comparable to the pandemic face mask wearing requirements, but scientific data supports our hypotheses from sections 4.1. and. 4.2. Even before the pandemic, in Asia the stillbirth rates have been significantly higher compared to e.g. Eurasia, Oceania or North Africa Also, the authors don't explain how pre-pandemic mask wearing is different than pandemic mask wearing.

tonyarkles 3y ago
> Also, the authors don't explain how pre-pandemic mask wearing is different than pandemic mask wearing. Frequency and duration are one difference. My understanding is that pre-pandemic Asian mask wearing is generally limited to the time a person was ill, not months at a time for 8+ hours a day.

VLM 3y ago

[flagged]

0x486566e7279 3y ago
If the conclusions about masks is this study are true, that means most indoor spaces and just being around gas powered devices for the same time periods, or being in your car with 3 other people is dangerous to your health. Most places that are not outside away from a co2 source, that do not have high air exchange rates have high co2 concentrations.
tomrod 3y ago
> This is politically unacceptable and only good news is permitted about masks and vaccines and so forth. Groupthink is the only think. I'm sorry you feel that way, VLM. I'm a proponent for masks from first principles, and am more than willing to update my priors when good data is presented. The stillbirth rate is definitely concerning. COVID-19 increase to the stillbirth rate is also concerning. Right now, causality of COVID-19 is observed, and mask-induced CO2 poisoning is hypothesized in relation to COVID-19 adjacent populations. By a way of inviting mindful conversation: the key for not falling down the rabbit hole of thinking everyone else but myself is a sheep is recognizing that people can have opinions, data can be biased, and we must strive for rigor. Works like a charm and I highly recommend it.
dang 3y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: this has apparently been a problem for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886523 (July 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14396344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14396344 (May 2017) I appreciate your good comments, but bad comments cause more damage than good comments add value. If you'd please review the rules and stick to them from now on, that would be good. I don't want to ban you!

petesergeant 3y ago

> Nor is it the first time the authors of the review have claimed face masks could have harmful effects. Several of the authors speculated in [OP ARTICLE] that masks might have caused stillbirths and other health issues. But this was an extrapolation based on studies exposing animals to carbon dioxide — and ignored the fact that masks don’t increase levels of the gas in humans in any clinically meaningful way. The Daily Mail nevertheless covered the paper in a story with an alarming headline, screenshots of which have been widely shared on social media. https://www.factcheck.org/2023/04/scicheck-masking-has-minimal-effects-on-respiratory-system-does-not-cause-long-covid/ https://www.factcheck.org/2023/04/scicheck-masking-has-minim...

foobarbecue 3y ago
[EDIT: I was wrong -- the fact check also explictly references the article being discussed here] This is about a different article, right? Fact check is on https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1125150 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1125150 but the article we're discussing here is https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14117 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14117
- magicalist 3y ago
  > This is about a different article, right? "Several of the authors speculated in a review published in March..." is referring to this article.
  - foobarbecue 3y ago
    Ah, you are correct, sorry about that. I shouldn't try to follow this stuff on a phone...
- petesergeant 3y ago
  I've made my comment a little clearer, thanks

DoreenMichele 3y ago

There is a possible negative impact risk by imposing extended mask mandates especially for vulnerable subgroups. Circumstantial evidence exists that extended mask use may be related to current observations of stillbirths and to reduced verbal motor and overall cognitive performance in children born during the pandemic. A need exists to reconsider mask mandates.

jandrewrogers 3y ago

The toxicity of chronic exposure to elevated CO2 levels has long been a topic of interest related to climate change for the reason that we could plausibly reach levels of clinical significance over the next 100 years. Interesting to see it arise in a different context.

Rhapso 3y ago
Yeah and it is largely ignored. It's developmental problems in high c02 atmosphere that really scares me. Adults handle temporary or even extended exposure well, but we don't have studies about extended c02 for kids, and there are no ways to ethically get them.
- hedora 3y ago
  I really want a CO2 scrubber for my house. Ideally, it'd fix the CO2 into biologically inert carbon bricks that I would dump in household waste, or some other convenient long-term storage. Given how well solar panels have taken off, I suspect this is more likely to actually work than industrial scale carbon capture. For one thing, houses have highly concentrated CO2 levels vs. the atmosphere. For another, there are a dozen simple carbon capture technologies in development that would work fine at house scale, but all are perpetually 5-10 years from reaching industrial scale. Since I'm talking about a luxury good, it could follow the Tesla model of using wealthy early adopters to subsidize the development of more efficient products down the line.
hollerith 3y ago
Do you claim to know that current CO2 levels aren't causing human disease?
clnq 3y ago
The CO2 levels in masks are much higher than in outside air. Even if CO2 in our air has risen from around 280 ppm to 440 ppm since the pre-industrial times, CO2 concentrations in masks are at least one order of magnitude higher. My CO2 meter maxes out at 5000 ppm pretty quickly in an N95 mask. Studies show the CO2 concentration after an hour of N95 face mask wear can be significantly above 8000 ppm, even as high as 30000 ppm [0][1]. People wearing these masks for many hours a day are likely the best in vivo examples of what increased CO2 concentrations in air does to a person. Until recently, we used to think that even such high concentrations did nothing. [2] Still, I do feel the impact on my focus and mental clarity when CO2 is above 2000 ppm. Not N=1 as other people speak about noticing the same when they buy air quality monitors, even on HN. It feels intuitive that chronic exposure would decrease our mental sharpness, if not through permanent damage, then at least through the immediate, direct effects. They would, however, be ongoing if the atmospheric CO2 rose significantly and permanently. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-CO2-levels-between-no-mask-KN95-respirator-and-JustAir-All-differences_fig5_350903274 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-CO2-levels-betwe... [1] posted article [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20420727/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20420727/

orwin 3y ago

I mean, if this is true, we have to quickly prevent gas stove as well as gas and oil heating to be added to home units. We also have to say to women to avoid barbecue afternoon when pregnant.

foobarbecue 3y ago
Maybe you're joking, but the bbq is acute exposure and the article focuses on chronic exposure. As for heating, if your heater puts your indoor CO2 above 0.5% then you are above the NIOSH / OSHA limits and should get it fixed. Article says measurements inside masks read 1 to 3%. Incidentally, bad indoor ventilation is an increasingly recognized health risk.
- orwin 3y ago
  What, up to 3%? i missed that, but if true, that's a huge issue. Some woodworkers use way more airtight masks 4 to 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. If true, those concentration levels are criminal and I expect a lot of construction companies (and sawmills, and papermills) to get sued for damage.
  - foobarbecue 3y ago
    You missed it? See the first sentence of the results section, table 1, and ... the rest of the paper. I looked into some of the refs in table 1 and it seems they are being misrepresented, mostly because Kisielinski et al are acting like this is the concentration during inhalation when in the 2 papers I looked at it was average over time. Since exhaled breath has several percent, I think you really need to be able to resolve concentration over time and look at the inhale, otherwise the data is useless.
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    Woodworking masks have exhalation valves.

rrock 3y ago

3% CO2 from mask wearing? I doubt it. I recently needed to measure 5% CO2, and I had to hold my breath to near-passout levels to reach 5% on the monitor. There’s no way that I could tolerate 3% for any length of time. More likely these authors cherry-picked studies with typos in them.

foobarbecue 3y ago
Seems like the key thing would be to measure the concentration under mask during inhaling vs exhaling. Exhaled breath has many % CO2. The article references a whole table of articles measuring CO2 under masks. I haven't taken the time to check if they separate exhale vs inhale but would be curious to know.
- foobarbecue 3y ago
  I checked Roberge et al 2010 and it seems they don't separate inhalation from exhalation in the gas measurements under the mask. I checked Sinkule et al 2012 and it's quite hard to tell how the review got those numbers from that paper. Might check more when I have time later.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  Just thinking about the numbers. Exhaled air has 4% CO2, while fresh air has 0.04%. But if you inhale air with 3% CO2 that should add to those 4% yielding 7% exhale. Now, in order to get 3% CO2 in your inhale this would mean that you would have to breathe in 42% stale air (with 7% CO2) mixed with 58% fresh air (~0 CO2). I wonder if this 42-58 mix is plausible.
  - kadoban 3y ago
    That would mean that the volume of gas trapped in a mask is 42% of lung capacity? Seems extremely implausible to me.
    - im3w1l 3y ago
      A typical breath is much less than full lung capacity, but even then I don't think it adds up.

niyumard 3y ago

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camgunz 3y ago

I had a more thoughtful and charitable post written up, but I reconsidered. What I have instead now is: if you're gonna say not even medical staff like surgeons should wear masks and that they're responsible for millions of stillbirths, you gotta do better than a survey of iffy CO2 levels under mask experiments and some hysterics about submarine CO2 levels. You need to measure blood levels. Like, if I were a researcher who wanted to get onto conservative media, this is the paper I'd write.

Llamamoe 3y ago
The whole publication is a joke. It goes on and on about breathing "2.8–3.2% carbon dioxide" when mask dead space constitutes maybe 15-30% of human tidal volume. At rest. And I'm pretty sure "2.8-3.2%" is a cherrypicked datapoint, other studies report lower concentrations. Realistically, all of this is less of an issue than classroom CO2 exposure over a schoolday but nobody's acting outraged about that one for some reason.

westcort 3y ago

Even with no mandate, masks alongside other factors, helped reduce COVID infection rates and mortality in Japan [1]. Meanwhile, this article is grasping for a mechanism of toxicity when no epidemiological evidence of toxicity exists, and masks are used occupationally by millions of workers daily. There is evidence from a dedicated infectious disease hospital that elastomeric masks prevent transmission of illness: —In a dedicated TB hospital, they have used elastomeric half-face respirators with N95 filter cartridges since 1995. The filters only need to be changed once per year. —Before implementing these filters, they only used surgical masks that resulted in up to 50% of their staff becoming TST positive and 1-2% with TB disease. —Since they started using the half-face respirators, they have not had a single TST conversion. With a plausible mechanism (filtration), no evidence of harm, and some evidence of benefit with certain forms of masking, maybe what is really needed is a risk:benefit calculation. An essentially no-risk intervention plausibly reduces infection risk and all of a sudden the bar of evidence to practice basic hygiene ratchets up to randomized phase 3 studies. Meanwhile, the same people will cite this preclinical, speculative, provocation of a paper and say masking is murder. Maybe there is something deeper behind this? People don’t like government mandates and don’t want to be told what to do in general. Individualism in contrast with the collectivist self-perception that is more pervasive in Japan may be a more important factor than evidence here. This observation will anger people because they want to believe their decisions are based on evidence, when they are really driven by psychology. [1] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/982234 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/982234 [2] https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25275/reusable-elastomeric-respirators-in-health-care-considerations-for-routine-and https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25275/reusable-ela... (pages 106 to 107)

wkat4242 3y ago

One of the things I wonder about is the microplastic fibers ending up in our lungs. Sure, medical professionals have been wearing them for years. But they haven't been reusing the same mask for days, crumpled up in pockets and disintegrated to the point of getting fluffy. I wonder what that will do for long-term health effects. But I guess at that time there was no time to factor that in as any results of long term research would have come after the pandemic anyway.