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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2415 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 7, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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Thing is I'm not overly convinced of the significant long-term harm -- we have seasons like this in Western Canada with some regularity, and have done since time immemorial -- one would think that there'd be an obvious epidemic of respiratory problems here, but it doesn't appear to be the case.

I'm pretty certain of the long-term harm from the air always being like that (like in some south asian cities). So I'd expect the long-term harm from breathing it in for a few days a year to be hard to detect - (made up numbers, there are definitely studies here but idk about the quality) .5% increased risk of lung cancer, .5% reduced lung capacity. It's worth wearing a mask for a few days a year to avoid that, but there won't be an epidemic of it

OK, so assuming people can't actually wear a mask 24/7, I'd like to see some numbers as to the proven impact of masking on this before buying in myself -- but, like, people can go nuts on the masking if they want.

I reserve the right to let these people know they are being a bunch of XXXXXX sillys though.

I haven't ever looked at studies on n95 masks as applied to smoke, because when I put the mask on I can't smell the smoke anymore and that's good enough for me (i know that sometimes something can mask a smell without physically removing the gas/particles but can tell that's not happening here).

This is like 4 minutes of effort, I probably should do more, but https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-020-00267-4

Surgical masks and respirators can provide limited protection for children during wildfire events, with expected decreases of roughly 20% and 80% for surgical masks and N95 respirators, respectively

]. In 2007, 30 half-facepiece masks were tested and the protection was further improved, with 95% of people having <30% of the exposure when wearing any of the respirators in the class [96]. While this amount of protection is likely inadequate for a worker who anticipates high lifetime exposure, in a situation where the general public is trying to temporarily reduce ambient exposure, such as with wildfire smoke, a 66–70% reduction in exposure for nearly everyone may be meaningful. In fact, in a general population cohort of non-fit-tested healthy adults, a crossover study in China found that there was less increase in airway inflammation (measured with exhaled nitric oxide) associated with air pollutant exposure when a study participant wore an N95, compared to wearing a sham N95 mask [103].

Note that 95% <30% doesn't mean the median is 30%, the median would be significantly less than 30%.

And you can (try to) notice when the fit is wrong and letting too much outside air in and adjust it yourself.

Sure, but you're taking an already small exposure (a week or so of smoky air) and reducing it by ~70% or whatever. It kind of reminds me of those "eating bacon increases the risk of <obscure cancer with .01% lifetime risk> by 30%.

That and I'm deeply suspicious of the public health effort to make stuff that was just a part of life 20 years ago into some big hairy deal -- thus my advice to crack a beer and not worry so much.

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