Neck Gaiters Vs Surgical Masks: Are neck gaiters safe?
Spoilers: It’s the surgical mask. Still, we were going to put the neck gaiter through some of the same testing we put our surgical masks through to measure just how effective it was. Using an ASTM Certified Particulate Filtration Efficiency Machine, we decided to actually put one of Amazon’s best-selling neck gaiters through the same testing as the masks we make.
The results were, as expected, not great. The neck gaiter, worn as directed, only filtered out a measly 8 percent of particulate matter. That’s well below the safety threshold if keeping COVID-19 at bay is your goal.
Just to be fair, we ran one of our masks through the same test. It filtered out 99.3 percent of particulate matter. So when it comes to a head to head battle between neck gaiters and ASTM Level 3 surgical masks, the question you should ask yourself is pretty simple. Do you want to filter 8 percent of particulate matter or 99.3 percent? Check out the video to see the match up in action.