Among the topics that spilled the most ink during the Covid-19 epidemic, those relating to protective masks figure prominently. How, why did Western countries come to suffer such humiliation? In an article published this week in the newspaper The Lancet, the Geneva science historian Bruno Strasser, of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Geneva, puts forward another explanation: it would be under pressure from industry and hospital managers in the 1960s and 1970s that the Reusable protective mask would have gradually been replaced by its disposable, perishable pendant, which would have contributed to the shortages.
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To understand this, Bruno Strasser and Thomas Schlich of McGill University in Montreal take us back to the last century. Appeared at the end of the 19th century, the masks were worn by the majority of operating theater personnel around 1935. Most of them consisted of one or more sheets of cotton gauze framed by a metallic thread. Many models were washable and sterilizable, in short reusable. They were the subject of scientific evaluations (patients were sometimes asked to breathe through to assess their filtering power), which led to an improvement in their general quality.
Plastic king
A flip-flop took place in the 1930s, notes Bruno Strasser, who studied the medical journals of the time for this – and the advertisements they contained. At that time, disposable models of paper and then synthetic fibers (plastic) arrived in the 1960s. Supposed to be more efficient (they allow inbound and outbound filtration, like FFP2 masks) and more hygienic, they represent a technical development appreciated at this time of race for post-war progress which saw the advent of plastic king and the transformation of hospitals, which opted for everything disposable.
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It is therefore not, Bruno Strasser argues, because the cotton masks were not as good as they were replaced (studies even prove their superiority), but because the disposable masks did the business of industry and hospital managers, for whom disposable is much easier to manage. And the authors conclude that to avoid a shortage during the next pandemic we must stop relying on perishable stocks of vital materials, a strategy that widens our vulnerability. “A mask can be washed repeatedly and used for life,” concludes Bruno Strasser, citing a scientific article dated 1918. In the midst of an epidemic of Spanish flu.
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