This Mask Filters Out More Smoke Than N95s, So Stock Up Now

Prepare for hazardous conditions now — not later.

It’s tempting to compartmentalize the fires tearing through Southern California as some kind of environmental freak accident. The reality is more sobering.

“It’s important to point the finger here at climate change,” Anthony Wexler, director of the University of California, Davis’ Air Quality Research Center told HuffPost. “This not random.”

Viewed within the context of global warming, the devastation in Los Angeles is more likely than not a glimpse of what’s to come throughout the United States: Worsening climate change creates the conditions for hyper-destructive natural disasters in populous urban environments. That’s why it’s so important to prepare for hazardous emergency conditions now — not later.

Protective masking is a crucial way to guard your health if you must go outside during a toxic disaster. (Wexler emphasized that staying indoors, with a quality HEPA carbon-activated air purifier, is best. If you must go outside, limit your inhalation; in other words, avoid outdoor exercise.) From the ongoing pandemic, many of us are familiar with N95 and KN95 masks to guard against the spread of the COVID-19 virus. But when you’re dealing with toxic airborne ash and hazardous smoke, like Angelenos currently are, P100 masks “provide greater protection,” according to California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

Opting for a mask with even more protection, like a P100 — which filters at least 99.97% of particulates when worn correctly, as opposed to 95% from an N95 — is well worthwhile. Ash and smoke from structural urban wildfires, like the kind Los Angeles is experiencing, contain toxic pollutants from burning homes, including lithium ion and lead acid batteries, paint and paint thinners, plastics, fire retardants from couches and mattresses, and more. These contaminants, which travel by wind for miles and are invisible to the human eye, are more harmful than smoke and pollution from other sources, and can lead to issues like chronic bronchitis and cancer, per the University of California, Los Angeles’ Labor Occupational Safety & Health Program.