Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/NuKGjwGNsR0   The use of face masks in regions blanketed with wildfire smoke could reduce the risk of hospital visits due to respiratory distress by 22 to 39%.  Environmental scientists at  Colorado State University compared the abilities of masks made of various materials to protect their users against pollution from wildfires and other sources.   N95 non-medical dust masks or their KN95 equivalents are the most effective at reducing hospital and ICU admissions for respiratory disease when compared with single layer cotton masks, single layered nylon or other synthetics as masks, and multilayered surgical masks .  This effect is even more pronounced as a greater proportion of the affected population embraces defensive mask-wearing.   Looking directly at the pollution filtration effectiveness of various mask mask materials, all materials perform poorest for particles with diameters of 0.5-0.6 um.  Cloth and nylon masks work better as particle sizes rise from 1 to 10 um.   The bott