OMG, I am so happy I’m not the only one wondering about oxygen intake from wearing masks. My father lived with emphysema and heart issues for much of his life and while occasionally he had to make a trip to the hospital because of his breathing difficulties or concerns of a heart issue, he was still going strong at 86. That is, until this year. After Covid-19 invaded our lives, my father would still go out with a mask on, to go grocery shopping or pick up his and my mother’s medicines. My father was never the kind of man who ever said he wasn’t feeling well, and only a week earlier he had gone to the ER because he was having difficulty breathing; par for course with his health issues over the years. The doctors did a test for Covid and told him he didn’t have it. My father was convinced he did, but aside from the trouble breathing he didn’t exhibit any other symptoms. Then at the end of May of this year, 2020, after returning home with my mother from a trip out, he told her wasn’t feeling well and went to sit on the front porch. My mother said she looked for him and found him, limp and not breathing, in the chair on the front porch. The rest is a little blurry because my mother told me one thing; my sister told me another. All I know is that someone called 9-1-1. The EMTs restarted my father’s heart on the front lawn and then again in the ambulance. He went to one hospital and was transferred to another one a long way out near Boston, and while his body was revived his mind was gone. I heard he had a heart attack; I heard he had a stroke; maybe both. He and I had spoken only a week before his death and he seemed fine, and while I personally don’t think he had the virus, I do believe that wearing the masks compromised the oxygen in his system and that the lack of oxygen caused a heart attack and/or stroke which ended his life on May 31st. So I truly believe that while it is necessary to wear these damn masks, doing so also compromises the oxygen levels in our systems.
Don’t mistake correlation for causation.
Your father had significant heart disease and, from your description of him possibly having a stroke as well as a heart attack, an arrhythmia as well.
An arrhythmia is so dangerous because it can generate blood clots which lodge for a while in the body, typically the lower extremities (legs). At some point, often after exertion, one or more clots, called a thrombus, dis!dodge from the wall of the vein or artery and travel towards the heart, brain, lungs, or a combination of these.
Mask wearing does not decrease blood oxygen; it slightly increases blood CO2 levels. This would not cause a blood clot to break loose and cause problems elsewhere.
Masks are unpleasant for some, but they do save lives and preserve health.
My sympathies to you and your family for your loss.
Regarding the measure of oxygen and carbon dioxide in a sealed room:
Your graphs for oxygen and carbon dioxide levels are a little misleading. The data shows that oxygen levels in the air relative to total atmosphere decreased by about 0.3% which seems very small. It also shows that carbon dioxide levels increased by 0.27% over the same time period.
There is a direct correlation between oxygen level decrease and carbon dioxide increase. They are changing at the same rate relative to total atmospheric concentration. ie, oxygen is being converted to carbon dioxide by the seven people in the room and it is a one-to-one ratio (or very close to it).
There is also the consideration that people wearing masks are doing so for hours and hours straight, continuously. The testing is showing 1 hour of exercise for healthy people. What about the people with medical conditions – heart attacks, asthma, etc – who are sitting and working, 8 to 10 hours, while wearing the masks. I reach 6 hours of wearing a mask and I have very direct chest pain. I am on day 4 of the week and I developed chest pain by 8 AM. Give me a few days off and no pain. Then I go back to work on Monday and CO2 starts building up again in my blood.
Laura, sounds like you may have health issues.
Get a thorough check up, preferably by a cardiologist.
But don’t stop wearing your mask. A surgical one is ok, as long as it doesn’t gap at the sides. If it does, try using plastic medical tape, ie. Transpore tape, to hold down the sides to your face.
Happy masking!😷😏
The conclusion that N95 masks cause CO2 build-up can not be made with the data shown. The only comparison we get is a baseline resting CO2 levels and a mask-wearing result whilst exercising. There is no result comparing CO2 levels whilst exercising with a mask and without a mask. Without this, your conclusion is just an assumption. Further testing with actual control variables would be required.
There is also the consideration that people wearing masks are doing so for hours and hours straight, continuously. The testing is showing 1 hour of exercise for healthy people. What about the people with medical conditions – heart attacks, asthma, etc – who are sitting and working, 8 to 10 hours, while wearing the masks. The build up may go down when the mask comes off (person got home after work) and then go back up again the next day, sooner, as the blood didn’t fully clear out all the toxins overnight.
What about respiration rate or other measures of the difficulty of breathing? Is there a change in the effort needed to breathe while wearing a mask even though the outcome for O2 levels in the blood remains nominal?
Thanks for all your efforts here – it’s all refreshingly useful!
Just an observation. You note a modest rise in paCO2 but above that comment in the article about nurses during a 12 hour shift, in the non-highlighted portion of the excerpt you display, that study showed a more significant rise in paCO2 of about 10 mm.
OMG, I am so happy I’m not the only one wondering about oxygen intake from wearing masks. My father lived with emphysema and heart issues for much of his life and while occasionally he had to make a trip to the hospital because of his breathing difficulties or concerns of a heart issue, he was still going strong at 86. That is, until this year. After Covid-19 invaded our lives, my father would still go out with a mask on, to go grocery shopping or pick up his and my mother’s medicines. My father was never the kind of man who ever said he wasn’t feeling well, and only a week earlier he had gone to the ER because he was having difficulty breathing; par for course with his health issues over the years. The doctors did a test for Covid and told him he didn’t have it. My father was convinced he did, but aside from the trouble breathing he didn’t exhibit any other symptoms. Then at the end of May of this year, 2020, after returning home with my mother from a trip out, he told her wasn’t feeling well and went to sit on the front porch. My mother said she looked for him and found him, limp and not breathing, in the chair on the front porch. The rest is a little blurry because my mother told me one thing; my sister told me another. All I know is that someone called 9-1-1. The EMTs restarted my father’s heart on the front lawn and then again in the ambulance. He went to one hospital and was transferred to another one a long way out near Boston, and while his body was revived his mind was gone. I heard he had a heart attack; I heard he had a stroke; maybe both. He and I had spoken only a week before his death and he seemed fine, and while I personally don’t think he had the virus, I do believe that wearing the masks compromised the oxygen in his system and that the lack of oxygen caused a heart attack and/or stroke which ended his life on May 31st. So I truly believe that while it is necessary to wear these damn masks, doing so also compromises the oxygen levels in our systems.
Don’t mistake correlation for causation.
Your father had significant heart disease and, from your description of him possibly having a stroke as well as a heart attack, an arrhythmia as well.
An arrhythmia is so dangerous because it can generate blood clots which lodge for a while in the body, typically the lower extremities (legs). At some point, often after exertion, one or more clots, called a thrombus, dis!dodge from the wall of the vein or artery and travel towards the heart, brain, lungs, or a combination of these.
Mask wearing does not decrease blood oxygen; it slightly increases blood CO2 levels. This would not cause a blood clot to break loose and cause problems elsewhere.
Masks are unpleasant for some, but they do save lives and preserve health.
My sympathies to you and your family for your loss.
Observation:
Regarding the measure of oxygen and carbon dioxide in a sealed room:
Your graphs for oxygen and carbon dioxide levels are a little misleading. The data shows that oxygen levels in the air relative to total atmosphere decreased by about 0.3% which seems very small. It also shows that carbon dioxide levels increased by 0.27% over the same time period.
There is a direct correlation between oxygen level decrease and carbon dioxide increase. They are changing at the same rate relative to total atmospheric concentration. ie, oxygen is being converted to carbon dioxide by the seven people in the room and it is a one-to-one ratio (or very close to it).
There is also the consideration that people wearing masks are doing so for hours and hours straight, continuously. The testing is showing 1 hour of exercise for healthy people. What about the people with medical conditions – heart attacks, asthma, etc – who are sitting and working, 8 to 10 hours, while wearing the masks. I reach 6 hours of wearing a mask and I have very direct chest pain. I am on day 4 of the week and I developed chest pain by 8 AM. Give me a few days off and no pain. Then I go back to work on Monday and CO2 starts building up again in my blood.
Laura, sounds like you may have health issues.
Get a thorough check up, preferably by a cardiologist.
But don’t stop wearing your mask. A surgical one is ok, as long as it doesn’t gap at the sides. If it does, try using plastic medical tape, ie. Transpore tape, to hold down the sides to your face.
Happy masking!😷😏
The conclusion that N95 masks cause CO2 build-up can not be made with the data shown. The only comparison we get is a baseline resting CO2 levels and a mask-wearing result whilst exercising. There is no result comparing CO2 levels whilst exercising with a mask and without a mask. Without this, your conclusion is just an assumption. Further testing with actual control variables would be required.
There is also the consideration that people wearing masks are doing so for hours and hours straight, continuously. The testing is showing 1 hour of exercise for healthy people. What about the people with medical conditions – heart attacks, asthma, etc – who are sitting and working, 8 to 10 hours, while wearing the masks. The build up may go down when the mask comes off (person got home after work) and then go back up again the next day, sooner, as the blood didn’t fully clear out all the toxins overnight.
What about respiration rate or other measures of the difficulty of breathing? Is there a change in the effort needed to breathe while wearing a mask even though the outcome for O2 levels in the blood remains nominal?
Thanks for all your efforts here – it’s all refreshingly useful!
Just an observation. You note a modest rise in paCO2 but above that comment in the article about nurses during a 12 hour shift, in the non-highlighted portion of the excerpt you display, that study showed a more significant rise in paCO2 of about 10 mm.
This is the elephant in the room…