Duke’s COVID mask study got much attention. But neck gaiter industry wants a do-over.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been good for the neck gaiter business. Those tubes of fabric that people wear around their necks, usually to keep warm, also function as a mask by simply being pulled up over the nose and mouth.
But then researchers at Duke University published a study Friday that cast doubt on the use of neck gaiters to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The researchers tested 15 types of masks and face coverings, but news coverage of their study has largely focused on one, the gaiter.
That’s because the gaiter they tested actually seemed to make things worse. While the various masks, to some degree, prevented droplets of potentially virus-laden moisture from getting into the air when someone speaks, the gaiter turned the larger droplets into a cloud of smaller ones that hung in the air longer.
“The use of such a mask might be counterproductive,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published in the journal Science Advances. The headline on The Washington Post article Tuesday morning was more direct: “Wearing a neck gaiter may be worse than no mask at all, researchers find.”
Headlines like that have caused turmoil in the neck gaiter industry, which consists of hundreds of gaiter manufacturers and other companies that print art or words on the garments and sell them, said Chris Bernat.
Gaiters keeping businesses alive
Bernat works for Vapor Apparel based near Charleston, South Carolina, and sits on the board of the Printing United Alliance, a trade group that includes several textile companies. Vapor mostly sells sun-protection clothing but has seen sales of its gaiters rise 450% in the past two months as people use them as coronavirus masks, Bernat said in an interview.
“A lot of people in our industry are literally keeping their businesses alive with this,” he said.
But not all gaiters are alike, Bernat says. Better, thicker materials distinguish a high-quality gaiter from what he calls a “giveaway gaiter,” one meant more for promotion than clothing.
“I have a feeling that whatever gaiter was in their lab was probably a giveaway gaiter,” he said.
Bernat said he reached out to the Duke researchers to see if they would test higher-quality gaiters made by his company, confident that they would perform better at preventing droplets from getting through.
Warren S. Warren, a Duke professor involved in the study, said the team has received many requests to test various masks and other products but that it’s not something their nonprofit lab wants to take on.
“Having said that, we would have no problem accepting samples that we could test, at some point, to represent the range of what is out there,” Warren wrote in an email Wednesday. “But we would very likely keep the brand anonymous (as we did with the commercial ones we tested). We are not interested in becoming the ‘Duke facemask certification facility.’”
‘Pretty thin’ material
Martin Fischer, the Duke physicist who designed the study, noted Monday that they tested only one neck gaiter, made of polyester mixed with a little spandex. In an interview, he described the material as “pretty thin” and said it got thinner when you stretch it over your mouth and nose.
Warren had the test gaiter with him during an interview on CNN on Wednesday morning, and said Fischer would probably show it on Anderson Cooper 360 in the evening. Warren said it was a commercial gaiter, not one given away as a promotion.
“If you hold up the fabric in front of your eyes, you can see light through it,” he wrote. “I think that gives a pretty good rule of thumb for asking if the fabric is doing any good.”
Fischer said the study was never meant to be a comprehensive test of all masks and mask materials. Instead, the Duke researchers wanted to show how easy it is to test the effectiveness of the wide variety of masks that people are wearing to protect themselves and others from coronavirus.
Warren said he understands that gaiter manufacturers are upset.
“Until Friday, they had no way to really test how well their gaiters worked,” he wrote. “So they market on the basis of style, comfort (which emphasizes thinness) and cost to manufacture. What we are really telling them is that this is easy and cheap to duplicate, and that they can improve their products.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Duke’s COVID mask study got much attention. But neck gaiter industry wants a do-over.."
