Finding The Best Face Mask Materials

Testing Homemade Mask Materials

Three weeks ago, we published a viral article covering The Best Materials for Making DIY Masks. The response has been huge. We've been flooded with requests from readers asking us to test MORE materials. The good news is, we want to help!

How We Can Work Together

With your help, we aim to test more than 50 household materials,  providing vital information such as how thread count and material weight affects mask efficiency — something that was left out of the Cambridge researcher's data. To do this, we need your help. Running these tests and purchasing equipment that can test down to 0.01 microns isn't cheap. Our small team in Asia is working round the clock to run these tests, but with your help we can run MORE tests and have a bigger impact!

How We'll Use The Money

For every $300 we raise, we can test one new material. If we hit $35,000, we'll have enough funds purchase a PortaCount Pro+ Fit Test machine like the one we used in this experiment. With a Fit Test machine, we will also be able to test which DIY face mask design is the most effective, and provide you with a rundown of your options.

What Materials Will We Test?

We want to make this project a joint effort for everyone! That means: together we will decide what materials to test! Have your say by voting in this poll to decide what materials we test. We will pick the most-voted materials to test, based on this poll.

Who The Heck Are We?

We are Smart Air. A social enterprise and certified B-Corp battling to provide reliable and data-backed information on air quality.  Following the spread of Covid-19, our team has been working tirelessly to provide data and information on how we can protect ourselves from the coronavirus. Learn more about who the heck we are.