PhD Candidates Zoe Pollard and Maddie Karod just published an article in Scientific Reports exploring metal leaching from “antimicrobial” face masks, demonstrating potential risk to the wearer due to infused copper and metal antimicrobial fibers. Leaching varied widely across manufacturer, metal, and leaching solution, but in some cases was as high as 100% of the metals contained in the as-received mask after 1 h of exposure.
