What are good options for protection against fumes?
I know there are gas masks; I am allergic to latex and spandex, so not sure about other rubbers, amd to coconuts, so not to sure about most activated charcoal.
I went looking for some eye and lung protection earlier today. Couldn’t find any at most stores. Got badly strobed at Target. I can’t see around strobes, so I shielded my eyes, and tried to walk towards the danger, to try to warn someone and get the dangeros weapon turned off. I got kicked out instead. Still suffering from disorientation from the accursed device.
Don’t bother with general purpose stores for respirators. You don’t know what you’re getting.
This is what I use:
I am sure Amazon US will have an equivalent. Latex masks haven’t really been a thing for a long time, as many people are allergic to it. Most modern ones are silicone. You won’t have a problem with activated charcoal because the particulate filter takes care of that.
I have an allergic reaction to a number of plastics and my hearing aid inserts are silicone. It works.
When the Icelandic volcanoes were going off I kept a couple of masks in the house and car. It’s a fact that volcanic dust plumes can touch ground maybe over a thousand miles from where they originated, and the sulfur dioxide and fine particles can kill. If you live anywhere within plume distance of a potentially active volcano, they are worth keeping. Your car can survive quite a lot of dust and SO2, but you can’t.
Over here you can have them delivered to a range of stores for pickup. But you might have success with Home Depot as they will sell PP against paint and solvents.
I had good success with this mask if a HarborFreight is any where near by.
Another location to try would be if there are any stores near you that cater to worker’s safety gear. I know I’ve seen similar masks in a place I was looking for steel-toed boots.
When the air in Singapore gets thick enough to cut yourself a slice of it, I (and most people here) use these:
They are good enough for almost all particulate (smoke, exhaust, pollen etc) but not necessarily aerosolised chemicals. I use them when I spray my plants with insecticide and I can still smell the spray, it just doesn’t make me gag to quite the same extent…
Maybe try a paint store. They probably will sell respirators or know where you could get something professional grade. I’ve had mixed success at hardware stores as well.
Unfortunately, totally ineffective against organics. Aerosols may be partly blocked because the droplets are absorbed (for a while), but anything with a high vapour pressure like acetone goes straight through.
Yeh, they’re mostly just good for harm reduction when smoke from wildfires in Indonesia and Malaysia descends on Singapore and you can’t spend more than 15 minutes outside safely:
Even as a smoker, I’m not going out in that without something over my face. I wasn’t sure what fumes @marjae was referring to but if it’s generalised pollution, an N95 is a reasonably effective, low cost solution.
The insecticide is quite nasty stuff and the mask is strictly “better than nothing, hold your breath, bin it immediately afterwards” in that context though, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend it for all purposes.
Cleaning fluids, pinesol, vinegar, perfumes, etc. can trigger eye pain, blinding tears, throat/bronchial pain, and asthma. Antifreeze fumes can trigger vomiting. Tobacco smoke can trigger throat pain, bronchial pain, and severe asthma.
I have cotton masks, but they provide NO eye protection and inadequate throat protection. I used to have a cheap filter mask, but lost it at some point.
It sounds like you can’t go out in a non-environmentally-controlled space at all. There is no solution that will work sufficiently for your parameters.
No, I don’t usually have trouble with fumes unless people go gassing places; unfortunately, people gas this hotel, and gas health clinics, and the like.
What do you mean by “gassing”? Does that include any sort of solvent based cleaning fluids or perfumes at all? If that’s the case, a full on paint mask like this is pretty much your only solution:
But that doesn’t really seem like a workable solution, not least because full face coverings are considered a security risk in most public places.
Forgive me for potentially intruding but is there any provision for full time carers in your neck of the woods? The sensitivities that you have would seem to make independent living basically impossible; have you thought about trying to find help?
I mean filling the air with chemicals which trigger eye pain, blinding tears, throat pain, bronchial pain, and asthma attacks. So it hurts, and it is hard to see, and it can be hard to breathe.
And what kind of jackass considers gassing places a-okay, but wearing gas protection a “security risk”?
And I’m in Virginia so there is no Medicaid to speak of and there are no provisions for care.
I’m really sorry to hear that; it’s a tragedy that so much of the US population is not given any sort of care provision. Are there no statewide charities you could talk to, in order to explore your options?
