It seems like overnight everyone is wearing, making, and selling face masks. While wearing face masks has been popular overseas for decades, only recently has it become popular and necessary here in the United States. With this new need for wearing face masks comes lots of questions about them. Why wear face masks? Do they even help? What material works best? We hope to address these questions in this special-edition blog entry here at HeatPressNation.com.
Why Wear A Face Mask?
The CDC recommends wearing face masks in public settings, where appropriate social distancing may be difficult (grocery stores, gas stations, etc.) to help minimize the spread of COVID-19. One important thing to note is that wearing a face mask alone does not replace social distancing, frequent hand-washing, not touching your face, or any other preventative measures. Rather, it is an essential part of a multi-faceted solution to help "flatten the curve" on the spread of COVID-19.
In some cities and states, a face mask may be required to enter a building, like a store or post office. In the case of COVID-19, one could be a carrier of the virus without showing any symptoms. Mandatory or not, face masks (combined with social distancing) are very helpful in protecting yourself and those around you.
What Kind Of Masks Work Best?
By now, most of us have heard of the worldwide shortage of N95 and similar face masks, most commonly used in the healthcare industry. Governments across the world have reserved most sales of those types of masks to the healthcare workers and others directly on the frontlines of the battle against COVID-19. So with these masks unavailable for the rest of us, what are we to do?
Thankfully, many industries have pivoted their manufacturing efforts to start producing facemasks for the general public. In many cases, these masks are not medical grade, but still provide an extra level of protection for the wearer. There is a fantastic article in the Huffington Post that reports the test results from different materials. They judged the effectiveness of different materials based on breathability and filtration. In their testing, canvas materials, coffee filters, and shop towels proved to be at the top of the list of readily-available home materials that can be used for masks and mask filters. For full results, please refer directly to the article.
Mask Availability
At Heat Press Nation, we now carry several different types of masks in various styles and sizes, including sublimation face masks. The great thing about these polyester sublimation face masks is that your customization options are nearly limitless. This is important from a social aspect. Putting a smile on someone's face with a humorous or fun design on your mask is a great feeling. Also, people (children, especially) are more likely to actually wear and use their face masks if they look cool and are comfortable to wear. Wearing face masks is new for many of us. So why not make this new, shared experience as fun as possible?
Custom Sublimation Face Masks are also very popular items to add to your product line. Many hard-working Americans have unfortunately been affected negatively by the change in our economy. Having an additional stream of income would be extremely valuable for many households across the country. Providing a necessary product at a fair price is the kind of honest work we are proud to support at HeatPressNation. Our sublimation masks come in multi-layered polyester and cotton & polyester versions, which on their own provide different levels of filtration. For those seeking additional protection, we have filter inserts available for all of our face masks.
Due to the short amount of time available to get this product to market, there hasn't been sufficient time for complete testing on our masks and filters. Therefore, we cannot in any way recommend or market these products for medical use, PPE, or related applications. All sublimation face masks sold by heatpressnation.com are recommended exclusively for casual use, as recommended by the CDC for those not requiring medical-level protection and above.
Please refer to our Face Mask Buyer's Guide to see which style of mask is going to work best for your needs. If you have any questions about our face masks, please feel free to give us a call at (800)215-0894 or email us at support@heatpressnation.com. Stay safe, stay creative, and remember that we're all in this together.
