Painter's mask

An inefficient and essentially useless "respirator"

This is what we are talking about:

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Painters masks are descendants of surgical masks. Think about why surgeons wear masks... They wore them for 50 years before the AIDS virus, not to protect themselves, but to protect the patient. The purpose of the surgical mask is to keep out of a surgical wound the little balls of spit that naturally come out when speaking and breathing!! Patients do better when surgeons keep that stuff out of the sterile field.

However, the mask does almost nothing to keep anything out of the wearer's lungs.

So for fiberglass and epoxy and even for wood dust, the painter's mask is pointless. Get a real respirator.