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Face Masks are Inefficient to Resist Air Pollution

A man wears a face mask while taking a selfie in Beijing in 2015. Getty Images
A man wears a face mask while taking a selfie in Beijing in 2015. Getty Images
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Face Masks are Inefficient to Resist Air Pollution

A man wears a face mask while taking a selfie in Beijing in 2015. Getty Images
A man wears a face mask while taking a selfie in Beijing in 2015. Getty Images

Face masks available to consumers in China for protection against air pollution vary widely in their real-world performance, suggests a recent study.

Although a mask may filter tiny particles as advertised, researchers report in Occupational & Environmental Medicine said that face size and shape as well as movement can lead to leakage as high as 68 percent.

Senior study author Miranda Loh, an exposure and environmental scientist at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland said: “Even if the filtration efficiency of the mask is high, and the mask fits the person initially, the mask may not continue to give a good fit as the person goes about their daily activities.”

“It is important for people to understand that not all masks are effective at reducing exposure to particles in air pollution. And none of these masks reduced the concentration of pollution gases such as nitrogen dioxide,” she added in an email.

The study team conducted an assessment of a sampling of masks in Beijing is part of a larger project funded by the Research Councils UK, examining air pollution in the Chinese capital and its health effects.

Air pollution causes an estimated 1.6 million premature deaths in China each year, the study team notes.

These tiny particles found in vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions and known as “PM2.5” can penetrate deep into the lungs, and from there, enter the bloodstream.

Tests made on nine different mask types showed that the average particle and carbon penetration ranged from 0.26 percent to 26 percent, depending on the mask material.

Richard Peltier of the University of Massachusetts, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Reuters Health by email: “Air pollution is a global problem that is important for not only Beijing, but also Boston and Barcelona.
Breathing pollutants, especially particulate matter, is very harmful, causing millions of early deaths across the world.”

“Future studies should recruit more volunteers, and focus on the main reasons why masks seem to fail - whether the material itself is faulty, the masks don’t fit different people well, or they don’t seem to work well for daily living conditions,” Peltier added.

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Nigerian Farms Battle Traffic, Developers in Downtown Abuja

Developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in Abuja. OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP
Developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in Abuja. OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP
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Nigerian Farms Battle Traffic, Developers in Downtown Abuja

Developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in Abuja. OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP
Developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in Abuja. OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP

Under the din of traffic from the highway bridge that cuts over his fields, Bala Haruna inspects corn, cassava and okra on his family farm.

A pump pulls up water from a nearby stream and is diverted through trenches dug through cropland wedged between four-lane roads -- fields which were here long before the nearby hotel, the imposing national mosque or any of the high-rises that make up downtown Abuja were even dreamed up.

"There were no buildings here," Haruna, 42, told AFP, reminiscing over his childhood as birds chirped and frogs croaked.

The urban farms dotting Nigeria's capital show the limits of the top-down management the planned city is known for -- oases scattered around pockmarked downtown that has long expanded outward faster than it has filled in.

They owe much of their existence to the fact that they lie in hard-to-develop gulches along creek beds. Even roads built through them over the years tended to be elevated highway overpasses.

That fragile balancing act, however, is increasingly under threat, as developers fill in farmland despite regulations protecting these areas as rare green spaces in a city known for concrete sprawl.

On the other side of the overpass, the future has arrived: the vegetation abruptly stops and temperatures suddenly rise over flattened fields razed by construction crews.

Local farmers said the people who took the land three years ago provided no documentation and only gave the eight of them 300,000 naira to split -- a sum worth only $190 today after years of rampant inflation.

Much of the farmland in and around downtown is supposed to be a municipal green space, with neither farms nor buildings on it.

But enforcement of the decades-old Abuja master plan is ripe with abuse and lack of enforcement, said Ismail Nuhu, urban governance researcher who did his PhD on the capital's urban planning.

Adding to the sense of precarity is that the land, on paper, belongs to the government.

"Politicians still use it to grab lands, just to say, 'Oh, according to the master plan, this is not to be here'," no matter what the document actually says, he told AFP, adding that, technically, even the presidential villa is not located where it is supposed to be.

Nyesom Wike, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, which includes Abuja, recently told reporters he would "enforce" the 70s-era master plan by building roads and compensating and evicting settlements that stand in the way.

FCT officials including Wike's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Urbanizing country, not enough jobs

The farms have provided steady employment -- a lifeline for some as the rapidly urbanizing country fails to produce enough jobs. A recent opening for 10,000 government jobs saw 450,000 applicants, according to local media.

"Having a green space... in a very thick, populated city like Abuja does a lot of good," said retiree Malik Kuje Guni, who started farming three years ago to supplement his pension.

While tens of thousands of residents pass by the farms each day without second thought, Guni, when he was working as a civil servant, would often come down to visit, enjoying the shade and fresh air.

Now tilling a potato plot of his own, "I can come down, work, sweat," the 63-year-old said. "I have hope something will come out of it."

A few blocks over, squat, informal houses made of wood and sheet metal give way to a field of sugarcane, corn and banana trees. Glass-paneled highrises, half-finished construction and the imposing Bank of Industry tower above.

The crops give way to land cleared by developers a few months ago, some of whom pushed into Godwin Iwok's field and destroyed his banana trees.

Iwok, who quit his security job 22 years ago to make more money as a farmer, has had parts of his fields destroyed twice in the past two years, neither time with compensation.

To Guni, the farms represent the city's rural heritage. Despite decades of government promises to relocate Nigeria's capital from the crowded, congested mega-city of Lagos, the move only occurred in 1991.

But neither Iwok, 65, nor Haruna want their children to continue their increasingly precarious line of work.

"I wouldn't want my children to stand under the sun as I did," Iwok told AFP.

"I only use what I'm getting here... to make sure my children go to school."