If masks prevent microbes from escaping your mouth, won’t the build-up of germs make you sick?

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I’m not trying to start anything, just genuinely curious.

In: Biology

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Just to lend some validation to your concern…I read the other day about the increase in oral health problems, namely tooth decay, from constant mask usage.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are around 100 trillion bacteria in the human microbiome, their primary location are the skin, mouth, nose, digestive tract.
Numerically the bit more than the number of human cells in your body. Bactria is a lot smaller than human cell so by mass they are around 1-3% of your body weight. Human feces are 25–54% bacterial biomass.

They are no problem and you want them there to help you digest food and to keep bad bacteria away.
You get sick not because there is bacteria in you but that it is bad bacteria in you.
Getting rid of bacteria by breathing them out it not a primary way to get rid of bad bacteria.

Getting rid of too much bacteria on humans in general, is a back idea because if you kill too many of them that live there without getting you sick you give external backteria that makes you sick a chance to establish themselves.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Masks arent for stopping you getting sick they are to stop you getting others sick. If you’re breathing out germs its already to late for you.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I dont know how you wear your mask, but at least for me there’s a distance between where my mouth stops and the where mask begins.

the masks catch droplets you breathe out. and also filters out any droplets already present in the air you’re trying to breathe in.

so yes after a while (usually several hours of usage) your mask will get kind of soggy, at that point you should change it as its protection is reduced.

but at no point does it put anything in your mouth that wasnt there already. there is no “buildup” inside of you, because you still breathe out normally. if anything the air you breathe is cleaner.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The germs that you expel are a tiny fraction of what is in your lungs. And if you are expelling germs, you are already infected, and so cannot get any sicker by a few germs being kept on the mask.