Masks, Breathing, Helmets, Environmental Exposure, Risk Reductions

Article Table of Contents

• Introduction
  • Helmets
  • Earplugs
  • Nuisance Level Organic Vapor Relief Particulate Respirator (😷)
• My masking norms around illness/sickness
• Masks & Scootering
  • Vehicles generate tremendous pollution & emissions
  • Reducing the volume of polluted air I might encounter
  • Breath holding, especially when close to accelerating engines
• Additional Reading
• Footnotes

Introduction #

I find that at some level, nearly everyone I know will take actions to protect their head from the environment. A warm hat in the cold, something for shade in the sun. Sunglasses, perhaps, or safety glasses sometimes. Ear plugs here and there. Maybe a mask if they’re sick or in a really noxious environment.

Hello, its me.

Here’s a collection of thoughts, all of which relate to the theme of ‘protecting the part of the body we might call our head’

(is a mask head protection or lung protection? etc)

I wrote a thing a time ago about peeing, and this post might be thought of as a similar grouping. Either everything for me, having to do with head protection & ajacent topics or why I wear one mask or another so much

And breathing is a big part of the masking thing. So it’s hard to draw the boundary exactly around what I’m writing about. Maybe after I finish writing I’ll re-do this section and it’ll be clear what unites the inbound meandery set of topics we’re about to encounter.

I recently wrote /on-risk, basically was two stories about risk that inform my decision-making.

This post got drafted the same time I was writing about risk & lynn hill’s near-fatal incident regarding a not-tied bowline & no safety check. In it, I briefly touch on the non-climbing related, safety-critical process of ‘ensuring the buckle of a helmet strap is closed’, as the most available-to-my-brain example of that ‘in some situations, once you start tying a knot, finish it’ principal applied elsewhere.

That helmet-related aside turned into a paragraph, then into a big footnote, then I decided to pull the whole conversation into it’s own piece, and this is what you’re reading now.

Helmets #

I love helmets. I don’t like head injuries. I find my full-face motorcycle helmet damned useful because it makes everything more peaceful - quieter, less windy, warmer, etc. My current helmet even has a shaded lense that I can flip down by pushing a lever on the helmet, so I can close the clear outer visor and have an inner shade layer, if I want.

I wear a climbing helmet as well, 100% of the time I’m outside, climbing or belaying. I so like my full-face helmet that when I wear a climbing-style helmet, it feels barely good enough. No visor? Nothing covering the sides of my face or my chin? Psh, does it even count as a helmet?

I’ll say more about helmets someday, for sure. I’m just… a big fan of helmets. [^helmets]

Earplugs #

Uuuugh what can I say about ear plugs? I wear them a lot.

Virtually all the time I’m on my scooter, and often enough after I get off the scooter, I’ll leave them in.

Especially any place that has music, or loud noises. I have tried and really like the Loop reusable ear plugs, but I mostly just use (and reuse) the orange disposable foam earplugs.

I have a small bag I keep full in my sling bag/fanny pack, thus they’re always available. I wear them if I’m walking alongside roads with loud traffic, or concerts, or any sort of american indoor restaurant. Anywhere that someone has to raise their voice to be heard, I’m wearing earplugs.

I sometimes sleep in the orange foam ones, but since I got the Loop earplugs, I’ve found myself much preferring those for sleep. They exert less pressure against the insides of my head, and though they don’t block quite as much noise as the foam ones, they block plenty of what I need blocked for sleeping. Most (all?) of the noise I happen to encounter by default when sleeping is vehicle noise.

There’s correlations between things like ‘hearing loss and dementia’, but also loud environments & depression, & regardless of all that, I find loud environments unpleasant! If I’m just walking around or near loud cars, or in any sort of loud environment, I’ll put in earplugs.

I have very comfortable ear plugs that are less silencing than the foam ones, that I sometimes wear when I sleep, because I can hear vehicle traffic from where I sleep, unfortunately. I carry a small fabric bag of disposable orange earplugs in my ‘sling bag’/fanny pack/’purse’, so I always, always have earplugs available to me.

So, not only do I wear ear plugs regularly enough when not on my scooter, I certainly wear them when I am on my scooter.

Nuisance Level Organic Vapor Relief Particulate Respirator (😷) #

I have noticed sometimes someone asks:

Why are you wearing a mask?

when they see me with a particulate respirator. (“mask”)

I put it on just before putting on my helmet, and it’s sorta visible inside the helmet in some situations, and it’s of course visible as I take off my helmet, again.

Sometimes there’s a certain energy with the question. it’s a different energy than the “what is that device attached to the side of your helmet” or “what’s the miles-per-gallon of that?” ‘¹

There are so many things I like about wearing a mask, I’ll explain them below, but I note feeling that some of the reasons that float to my mind are more available to me when I am not feeling like someone’s coming at me with preemptively defensive energy.

I recently encountered a question about masking on my scooter. I’ll probably now start answering with “why wouldn’t I wear a mask?” and leave it at that.

In the past, I’ve given an answer like:

I used to ride a moped around without a mask, I used just a wool buff. Essential in the cold, obviously, and nice to have the extra protection against sun even when it’s not cold.

Then I ended up reading something that clicked as ‘oh, that makes sense’ as soon as I read it. Something like:

exposure to vehicle emissions correlates to an increase in symptoms of depression².

ya know? ✌️

that’s the answer I give if I’m feeling a bit defensive, or I feel like they are getting defensive with me. ward them off with vulnerability!

But if there isn’t defensive energy, here’s a bunch of the other reasons I love to wear a Particulate Respirator 8247, R95, NIOSH APPROVED, Nuisance Level Organic Vapor Relief:

1. I do not like to smell vehicle exhaust, and because of how scooters work, roads work, and how I ride my scooter, I sometimes am passing fairly close to the exhausts of vehicles, and even if not trailing a vehicle (and it’s plume of tailpipe and tire rubber emissions, all the time, or brake dust if it’s braking) sometimes big heavy vehicles under load pass by perpendicular to my path. Again, I sorta imagine a plume or a cone of emissions following the vehicle, sorta like a shockwave following an airplane exceeding the speed of sound. These masks, when worn correctly, cause me to not smell the exhaust nearly as much. I take that to mean there’s a commensurate decrease in the particulate count I ingest from the air if I happen to take a breath in the vicinity of that vehicle.
2. A mask provides great sun protection, thus I wear a mask even if I know I’m not going to be around any other moving vehicles (like 6am). I put on sunscreen every day, and do everything else I can to minimize sun exposure. A full-face motorcycle helmet covers lots of my face, and lots of potential directions sun/heat has to bounce onto my skin are thus completely blocked. Covers the top of the nose down to the chin, and the cheecks.
3. A mask adds a lot of warmth and wind reduction, pairs well with my full-face helmet. I always view comfort and safety as closely related. Staying comfortably warm is crucial, so in the winter my combination is a mask + a wool buff, and that inside my full-face helmet usually does well enough.
4. The mask helps me sorta pre treat the air I’m breathing. Do you know/can you recall the winter-time sensation of how air can become quite painful to breath, if it’s sufficiently cold and/or you’re breathing sufficiently hard? And how the opposite of that is shallow, smooth breaths of warmed air? If you can have a breath of air close to your face sorta trapped in a scarf, that bit of the air is not painful, or is less painful to breath, than the air that’s not yet been warmed up. The mask creates a little bubble of air that stays warm, humid, and presumably a bit cleaner than the air outside the bubble, especially if you’re in the middle of an intersection and changing light cycles and groups of accelerating vehicles.
5. In the winter, a mask reduces a bit the condensation with my breath and incrementally seems to lower the issues of a frosting-over visor.

The real win is to not have to deal with traffic at all, or unwanted vehicular trips at all, and sometimes that’s been the case for my life, and sometimes not. So this is how I protect my lungs when I ride around Denver.

So much for masking.

My masking norms around illness/sickness #

I keep a fabric mask in my ‘sling bag’/purse thing, and I wear it 100% of the time if I ever feel sick, or am exhibiting symptoms of any sort of sickness. It goes straight into the wash after I wear it.

Maybe it’s allergies, maybe I’m getting truly ill, so as soon as I feel nasal/respiratory/flu/stomach anything, I’m likely to be masked 100% of the time when I’m inside. It would be awkward to feel ill, not be masked, the next day feel way worse, find out it’s something severe, and only then start wearing a mask. 😬

I already wear a mask 100% of the time I’m on my scooter, wearing one other parts of the time is hardly distinctive to me.

I’ll also more likely be wearing a mask out and about if I’ve been around a known-sick person, like sometimes when my kid is sick, or if I’m about to be around an immuno-compromised person, or if I’m around sick people. (So, sometimes, just a big-enough/dense-enough crowd is enough for me to put a mask on. or being at a hospital, even if I am not sick at all)

It provides sun protection, too, and my nose is particularly prone to getting sunburned, so having ‘mechanical’ sun protection via a fabric mask is great.

My mask also has flowers on it, I like flower-themed things, I don’t hate it like I’ve sometimes hated really severe-looking masks.

That made sense. Especially because it might not be just the increase in ingested vehicle consumables (brake pade dust, aerosalized tire rubber, tailpipe emissions), but because to be close to the sheer physical and emotional weight carried in the structures generating all that pollution is to have your own physical form pretty aggressively exposed. To be somewhere where the pollution is high is to experience a known-harsh environment that would be depressing/ensaddening even if there was no pollution to be ingested.

Also, to be exposed to more vehicle miles traveled is then, thus, to be exposed to more of the ensaddening conditions of what causes/correllates with vehicle emissions is to be exposed to a bit more ensaddening things, AND one gets low-level dosed with noxious stuff along the way.

So, I see the state of ‘not exhibiting anything/enough of the things that some people say rounds to depression’ is achievable, certainly something that everyone is equally entitled to, and is made a bit harder or a bit less available as any portion of your life takes one into heavily polluted, dangerous places.

Or, put another way:

If you feel at all depressed, and are ever exposed to vehicle emissions, here’s some ways that might help you reduce your exposure, because of some precautionary principal

Masks & Scootering #

Sometimes I get asked why I wear a mask when riding my scooter around. I wear what looks like a heavy duty kn-95 type thing when on my scooter, I buy them by the 25 pack and wear them for a while. Maybe I could/should swap them out more frequently than I do, whatever. Better than nothing, and, again, it’s only part of the strategy for reducing how much vehicle pollution I ingest.

I like it for two primary reasons:

1. skin/sun protection (year round) and especially for the heat retention in the winter.
2. Part of a strategy of avoiding ingestion of the most prevelant categories of vehicle emissions

Did you know exposure to vehicle pollution correlates with increased signs of depression?

Josh, of course breathing the tailpipe emissions from combustion engines is bad!

Vehicles generate tremendous pollution & emissions #

This is a quick overview for why I always wear a 3M Particulate Respirator R95, Nuisance Level Organic Vapor Relief when out and about on my scooter.

Vehicles emit a variety of forms of pollution:

• Tailpipe emissions (duh)
• Brake pad metal dust
• Tire rubber microplastics
• Noise (engine noise. Tire/rubber rolling noise. The noise of the wind/pusshing through the air)
• Light (both sunlight glaring off the car, and wildly obnoxious, hostile, aggressive headlights)
• Psychological intimidation
• the constant psychological threat of total destruction of whatever the vehicle might encounter, if it either deviates from the intended path, or doesn’t stop quickly enough in any particular way.

electric cars are no better. They generate less/no tailpipe emissions, but tire rubber microplastics go up, and the space consumption & danger to others is the same as any other car.

Reducing the volume of polluted air I might encounter #

I assess that my lungs are kept relatively cleaner by me riding a scooter rather than riding a bike - I work hard on a bike, so I do lots of heavy respiration, and I’m moving slower/spending more time adjacent to the sources of pollution.

If I were biking alongside high-pollution corridors, I’d be spending extra time breathing extra heavily, without a full-face helmet or a high-quality respirator.

I don’t know how much extra air pollution I’d be exposed to, but it would be a lot. On my scooter I move quickly through polluted areas, I have the visor down and I have the quality mask, and because I’m not powering the vehicle with metabolic output, my breathing can be slow, relaxed. It allows me to hold my breath when anywhere close to engine exhaust.

Breath holding, especially when close to accelerating engines #

I have pretty good lung capacity. To enjoy/expand my own lung capacity, I combine light ‘training’ with good timing, to further reduce exposure to air pollution.

I’ll hold my breath anytime I’m near engines/tailpipes emitting anything. When my current breath is ‘up’, I’ll smoothly exhale, take another deep breath, and then hold it again.

Sometimes I hold a full breath, sometimes it’s a half-breath. I don’t do anything stressful, but it means I might take only a single breath in 60-90 seconds of scootering, timed to not ingest new air until I’m not overly close to a polluting vehicle. And I 100% nasal breath.³

I have experienced enough of ‘the sads’ over the last few years that any incremental reduction of exposure to depression-exacerbating vehicle pollution feels like the right move.

Josh, you seem overly concerned about air pollution

Vehicle tires are consumable, right? Smallish sedan tires are 20 lbs. Heavier pickup trucks (ick) are 45-100 lbs. A few pounds of rubber is aerosolized and ejected into the environment when tires are used up.

Tire rubber emissions obviously go up when the vehicle is braking or accelerating. The rubber is being pulled harder, so the emissions spike. Same with noise and tailpipes.

this is why the Standard American Design for junctions (SAD junctions) are doubly egregious. The stopping and starting created by light-mediated and stop-sign mediated junctions is like a 10x increase in emissions, vs. something like the traffic bean which encourages slow, smooth, interleaved flow without stopping or the acceleration of a traffic light.

4 tires on 10 million cars, losing 2 pounds per tire about every two years……..that’s like 80,000,000 pounds of rubber that seemingly just disappears into thin air! source

Additional Reading #

• Exposure to traffic-related air pollution is associated with increased mental health service-use among people recently diagnosed with psychotic and mood disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. (r/science)
• 3M Particulate Respirator 8247, Pack of 20, R95, NIOSH APPROVED, Nuisance Level Organic Vapor Relief. Once you try a nice mask like this, it might be hard to go back. Once I started getting choosy about masks, I started wearing them a lot. I appreciate that to smell a vehicle or be downwind of it while it’s changing its speed via brakes and thus increased rolling friction on the ground, or its changing its speed via the engine, and thus increasing the particulate shedding rate and tailpipe emissions, is to be sorta ‘bathed’ in a plume of emisssions.

Footnotes #