For the past year and a half, have you been throwing off your surgical mask every four hours? Do you buy back a box each week, even if it means doing several stores out of stock? The revolution may be coming soon. According to a French study, “surgical masks, when washed up to ten times in the machine, retain their compatibility with the standard that applies to them” and remain more effective than a fabric mask.
What were they waiting for to tell us? The High Council of Public Health must still grant the Afnor regulation to surgical masks so that the use of a washed surgical mask is authorized. With the subtleties that this implies: impossible to use a washed mask in hospital, especially in surgery.
But if you want to test, you won’t be denounced. Philippe Cinquin, co-author of the study, believes on France Info that there is a double stake in this “recycling” of masks. Economic first, given the budget affected by some families, but also ecological, since “the proportion of plastics corresponding to these surgical masks represents 1% of all plastic in France”.