Thread by @LazarusLong13

Do masks increase humidity? Yes. And temperature - surprising at first, but makes sense.

Why is this important? The humidity results in coalescence of droplets, making them bigger - and easier to capture by the mask.

Here's a simple N95 that I bought at Lowe's a year ago.

SensorPush that fits in the mask. I put it with humidity sensor away from my mouth, towards mask.

Starting temp and RH with no mask.

After 1 minute:

After 5 minutes. I suspect it went down because the picture was taken when I was breathing in.

After 3 minutes of going, "Hellolololo", over and over. (No one to talk to as girlfriend is Zooming).

#CitizenScience is fun, I gotta say!

So, that was showing masks DO raise humidity.

And alluded to humidity helping with source control (me infecting others).

Will that humidity help me as well?

Maybe so.

nih.gov/news-events/ni…

Please bear with me while I noodle through this....

But why? What mechanism could result in this?

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

So, the respiratory epithelium gets hydrated. But how does that help?

Turn out it helps with MCC:

https://twitter.com/VirusesImmunity/status/1320430656481120256?s=19

And @VirusesImmunity's absolutely terrific and long review here goes into more of the why:

annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/an…
(HT @linseymarr - one of her tweets led me to that review)

So, more research needs to be done, for sure.

But I've seen enough to think that this is yet another reason to wear a mask.

Especially, in these cold winter months!