Use each mouth cap once. Only touch your mouth mask with clean hands. Only hold your mouth mask by the elastic or string. Get a clean face mask every four hours. Wash fabric mouth masks daily at 60 degrees.
The rules are clear
The rules for using the mouth mask are clearly described on the site of the National Government. But there are plenty of masks that disappear in trouser or jacket pockets or bags, or are hung on car mirrors. To be used again unwashed afterwards.
From a newspaper survey BN DeStem shows that 86 percent of the survey participants wear a dirty face mask. How bad is that?
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‘Risk of infecting yourself’
“Those rules are not there to be ignored”, says Marcel Zwietering. He is professor of food microbiology at Wageningen University. “We have to stick to it. Because if 17 million people use their mouth mask incorrectly at the same time, it can get out of hand.”
So also Zwietering repeats: do not touch the mouth cap on the outside, and only with clean hands. “There are two reasons for this,” he says. “In the first instance to protect yourself. The virus can get on products if someone has just spit over it for you. If it gets on your hands, you are not sick yet. But are you touching your mouth mask … Then you run the risk of infecting yourself like that. “
For fellow human beings
“In the second instance, we must adhere to the masking rules to protect others,” says Zwietering.
“We sometimes forget a bit, but the coronavirus can also be on your hands or on the outside of your mouth mask. And then you can blow it around the supermarket and infect other people.”
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That is also the reason that such a mouth mask must be thrown away every time after use. Or, if it is a cloth item, it should be washed at 60 degrees, long wash. “With a good high temperature, the virus is destroyed. What is also possible is to boil the face mask in water, when the water boils it is enough immediately.”
Dirty place on your body
Moreover, it is also simply hygienic, says the professor. “All kinds of bacteria accumulate on such a cap, which afterwards, if you don’t wash it, can also swarm there undisturbed.”
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That is not harmful to your health: you cannot make yourself sick with your own bacteria, Zwietering knows, but it is dirty. “Your mouth is one of the filthiest places on your body, it contains by far the most bacteria. You are blowing in such a cap, it gets moist, dirty.”
It’s like putting on a new pair of underpants every day, Zwietering concludes. “Everyone thinks that is very logical. And if you don’t do it, at some point it will start to smell a bit.”
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