KUCHING: Fears over the safety of wearing face masks are unfounded, said medical practitioner Dr William Voon.
“Surgeons and theatre staff in hospitals use face masks for lengthy periods without ill effect. Others in sterile setups like medical labs, drug labs, food packaging factories, and so on also mask up for hours without ill effect,” he told New Sarawak Tribune today.
He pointed out that Easterners, especially the Japanese and Korean, routinely wore face masks as well.
He said that the common fear cited for wearing masks was low oxygen or hypoxia and high carbon dioxide in the breath.
“However, we all know that of the air that we breathe only a small percentage of the oxygen is removed in each breath. In the same breath, a little more carbon dioxide is added.
“In a mask, the expelled air still has lots of oxygen. It is just that using an N95 mask, where the pores are smaller, you would need to take heavier breaths,” said Dr Voon, who is also Diabetes Malaysia Sarawak Branch chairman.
He said that in the three-ply masks that most people commonly used, surrounding fresh air would ‘sneak in’ from the sides, top, and bottom of the mask.
He clarified that the chances of hypoxia and giddiness in users was unlikely.
Meanwhile, he said that in most other infectious diseases, avoidance of contact with a patient or vector was adequate. However, in Covid-19, he said that distancing oneself from patients was also necessary.
“Droplets from a patient’s cough can carry beyond six feet. This is why facial masks are so important in control of the pandemic. Masks on a patient drastically reduce the number of viral particles discharged into the surroundings,” he said.
