TORONTO -- Much like your favourite pair of underwear, that piece of fabric that's been wrapped snugly around your face during the pandemic to help protect you and others against COVID-19 can't last forever.
Cloth face masks, similar to clothing, suffer from wear and tear and they should be replaced after a period of time, experts say.
"Like any other material, they do have a lifespan," Dasantila Golemi-Kotra, an associate professor at York University who specializes in the molecular, cellular and chemical biology of microbial infections, told CTVNews.ca. "For example, undergarments, you use them for a certain amount of time and they lose their quality. This is more important when it comes to face masks, especially when we think about them as barriers to the respiratory droplets that come out of our mouths or noses."
How can you tell if your mask needs to be replaced?
"If there's any rips in it, even if it's not where your mouth is, then you should probably get rid of it," Order of Saint Francis HealthCare infectious disease doctor and University of Illinois faculty member Dr. Abeer Almajali told CTVNews.ca. "If you start noticing the ear bands, the loops, start getting looser or less elastic that's also a bad sign, because air and particles can get in through the sides, too. If it feels less snug over time that's also a reason for you to throw out your mask."
While inspecting your mask, if there aren't any obvious signs of wear and tear, Almajali suggests holding it up against a light. If any light shines through the cloth, it's time to throw it away.
One of the reasons cloth masks can deteriorate and became transparent, and therefore lose their effectiveness, is due to machine washing. It may be the most effective means of cleaning your mask, but it comes with a drawback.
"What's happening is that as you're laundering there is going to be a bit of abrasion that's going to take away from the fabric integrity," microbiologist and author Jason Tetro told CTVNews.ca. "Of course, the whole point of trying to protect your respiratory tract is to have that integrity there."
How often you wash your mask can depend heavily on how often you use it and for how long.
"If you're only using it once to go to the grocery store, you can safely store it and use it the next day, but if you were to use it for at least six hours straight I would definitely not use it again [until it's been washed]," Golemi-Kotra said.
Almajali agreed, adding that it also matters what kinds of activities you perform while wearing a mask.
"The number of hours you're wearing the mask will directly impact how long you can continue to use it, and also the types of activities you do while wearing the mask," she said. "If you're someone who regularly works out in an indoor gym and you're forced to wear a mask then that's obviously going to reduce the longevity of wearing the mask."
Wearing a mask for an extended period of time or during intense physical activity can result in a buildup of sweat, dirt and grime, not to mention droplets from your own mouth and nose and the environment. If you don't want to wash your mask every day when you get home from the office or after class, it's best to have a number of masks on hand so you can grab a fresh one each day.
In addition to how often you wash it, how long your mask will last can also depend on the quality of the fabric. It may also be tied to the effectiveness of the mask. So, if you just threw out your mask after holding it up against a lamp and realizing the cloth is too thin, you may want to think about investing in a better-made one.
"There's no standardized way of manufacturing cloth masks, so each one is going to be a little different," Almajali said. "If you have a cloth mask you want it to be made of a material that's very densely woven because you want as little particles to come in."
This is especially important in light of how infectious the recent COVID-19 strains have become, including the Delta variant.
"High-thread-count cotton is much better than low-thread-count cotton because in terms of filtration the pores tend to be smaller in the high-thread-count cotton compared to the low one," Golemi-Kotra said. "So, in that way the quality does matter."
More layers can also ensure better protection. Even if one layer begins to deteriorate, the other layers can still offer a good amount of protection, she said. Experts have previously suggested this sentiment may be correct.
One way to extend the life of your mask could be to wash it by hand.
"The fact is if you're laundering it inside of a washing machine that's going to be a heck of a lot more disruptive than, say, washing it in a baby tub in your sink," Tetro said. The trick is applying "enough vigour, enough massaging, enough washing so that you're killing whatever may happen to be in there."
As for those who prefer wearing disposable surgical masks instead of cloth ones, be sure to remember the key word in that phrase—disposable.
"Surgical masks start declining in efficacy after two hours of wearing them. That doesn't mean they stop working, but two hours into wearing them they start declining in how well they're working," Almajali said. "I see a lot of people have surgical masks in their cars that they use day-in and day-out whenever they go into the grocery store when they should be using fresh ones every day if that's the mask they choose to use."
