Familiarity with the use of face coverings to reduce the risk of respiratory disease has increased during the coronavirus pandemic; however, recommendations for their use outside of the pandemic remains limited. Here, we develop a modeling framework to quantify the potential health benefits of wearing a face covering or respirator to mitigate exposure to particulate air pollution. This framework accounts for the wide range of available face coverings and respirators, fit factors and efficacy, air pollution characteristics, and exposure-response data. Our modeling shows that N95 respirators offer robust protection against different sources of particulate matter, reducing exposure by more than a factor of 14 when worn with a leak rate of 5%. Synthetic-fiber masks offer less protection with a strong dependence on aerosol size distribution (protection factors ranging from 4.4 to 2.2), while natural-fiber and surgical masks offer reductions in the exposure of 1.9 and 1.7, respectively. To assess the ability of face coverings to provide population-level health benefits to wildfire smoke, we perform a case study for the 2012 Washington state fire season. Our models suggest that although natural-fiber masks offer minor reductions in respiratory hospitalizations attributable to smoke (2%–11%) due to limited filtration efficiency, N95 respirators and to a lesser extent surgical and synthetic-fiber masks may lead to notable reductions in smoke-attributable hospitalizations (22%–39%, 9%–24%, and 7%–18%, respectively). The filtration efficiency, bypass rate, and compliance rate (fraction of time and population wearing the device) are the key factors governing exposure reduction potential and health benefits during severe wildfire smoke events.

中文翻译：

---

量化口罩和呼吸器对健康的益处，以减轻严重空气污染的影响


在冠状病毒大流行期间，人们越来越熟悉使用面罩来降低呼吸道疾病的风险；然而，在大流行之外使用它们的建议仍然有限。在这里，我们开发了一个建模框架来量化佩戴面罩或呼吸器以减轻暴露于颗粒空气污染的潜在健康益处。该框架考虑了各种可用的面罩和呼吸器、适合因素和功效、空气污染特征以及暴露反应数据。我们的模型显示，N95 呼吸器可针对不同来源的颗粒物提供强大的防护，佩戴时可将接触量减少 14 倍以上，泄漏率为 5%。合成纤维口罩提供的保护较少，很大程度上依赖于气溶胶粒径分布（防护系数范围为 4.4 至 2.2），而天然纤维和外科口罩的暴露量分别减少了 1.9 和 1.7。为了评估面罩为野火烟雾提供人群健康益处的能力，我们对 2012 年华盛顿州火灾季节进行了案例研究。我们的模型表明，尽管由于过滤效率有限，天然纤维口罩可略微减少因烟雾导致的呼吸道住院率（2%–11%），但 N95 呼吸器以及较小程度上的外科口罩和合成纤维口罩可能会显着减少因烟雾而住院的人数。吸烟导致的住院率（分别为 22%–39%、9%–24% 和 7%–18%）。过滤效率、旁路率和合规率（佩戴设备的时间和人群的比例）是严重野火烟雾事件期间控制暴露减少潜力和健康益处的关键因素。