Fighting the Pandemic: Ensuring Mask Effectiveness

November 17, 2020 | By: Jason Cannon 

While the CDC recommends wearing a mask, it became apparent to Texas Tech researchers that not all masks are equally effective. Hear how they made efforts to determine which masks worked better than others.

As COVID-19 continues to impact the world, Texas Tech faculty have been working hard on various coronavirus relief efforts. This video is part of a series that shares what researchers have been doing these past several months in the fight against the pandemic.
Karin Ardon-Dryer, an assistant professor from the Department of Geosciences in the College of Arts & Sciences, has expertise in atmospheric aerosol research. She served on a team testing mask materials, and her knowledge was a vital part of determining which masks work better than others. Ardon-Dryer utilized the same tools used in atmospheric measurements to determine the efficiency for each of the different masks. Particles were generated and passed into dedicated devices that counted the number of particles before and after the mask. Ardon-Dryer then compared how many particles were filtered by the mask fabric. Watch the video above to learn more about how mask efficiency was determined.

tags: COVID-19, College of Engineering, Department of Geosciences, Raider Impacts, atmospheric science, coronavirus