Full-Face Snorkel Masks Save The World! Err... No

The sun is shining, the temperature is rising and thoughts turn to palm trees swaying in a sultry breeze, warms waters lapping against shore and the delights of dipping beneath azure waters to gaze upon Cousteau's underwater empire. Unfortunately though, such thoughts must be put on an indefinite hold as Covid-19 or SARS 2, The Revenge, as it is probably being called in Hollywood meetings, wreaks havoc on the tourism and aviation industry alike.

Still if you can't actually partake of your beloved water sport, you can still gain a modicum of pleasure in browsing the interwebby looking for some new whizzy bit of kit. There is nothing that enthusiasts of all sports like better than owning a new piece of tech. And there is nothing that sports kit manufacturers like better than selling us their shiny new gizmos, gadgets and thingamajigs that, they assure us, will make us look cool and fashionable the next time we go to the beach or step onto that dive boat.

Let’s face it; we’re all guilty of this aren’t we? Who among us hasn’t disposed of a perfectly usable piece of gear and replaced it with something we really didn’t need but it was a “bargain” and it looks soooooo good?

There are of course people who take such guilty pleasures too far. These people are called PADI diving instructors. Then there are people who don't go far enough. For this second group of people being cool and fashionable on the beach can be achieved with a single purchase, for they believe that coolness comes not from a natty rash vest, a snazzy wetsuit or even a body shape that resembles something faintly human. For them all water sport chic is wrapped up in a single piece of sci-fi wizardry, the full-face snorkel mask. These people are called many things, none of which is polite. But spare a thought for these people for in this dark and cloudy time their world is becoming even less pleasant.

Decathlon, the French originators of the first full-face mask are limiting purchases of their full-face masks to just 2 per person. This means that the poor, fashion challenged, purchasers of these masks are denied the chance to own every available colour these things come in. Oh the inhumanity of it all…!  Imagine having to go to the beach in your blue shorts and not having a blue mask to match. And let’s not forget the poor wives, in their pink bikinis, not being able to get a matching pink mask to complete the ensemble and having to make do with the boring white one instead!

I SAID. WE SHOULD HAVE GONE TO THAT LECTURE ON HAND SIGNALS

Why is this happening? Well apparently, scientists, medics, students and people in sheds across the world are busily retrofitting full-face masks and turning them into ventilators and personal protective equipment in order to support the global fight against the pesky virus. Manufacturers like Decathlon are assisting in this by helping with supply and advice and therefore stocks are reduced.

Anyone who’s read our previous pieces on full-face masks couldn’t help but notice that we are not fans of these things. We think that they are…. how can we put this… not very good at all. But even we couldn’t have a problem with them being used in the battle against Covid could we? Err… Yeah we could.

Putting aside the ingenuity of the boffins and shed workers who are refitting these masks and their undoubted desire to help for one minute and assuming that Decathlon and other manufacturers are being nothing but altruistic in their assistance, we still feel a little uncomfortable about all this.

Imagine for instance that you are rushed into hospital panting like an asthmatic hippo, your lungs ridden with virus. You’d want the medics to use everything in their armoury to help you right? You’d want ventilators, drugs and computer panels that beep and flash every twenty seconds. But would you want a doctor to pull out a pink plastic full-face snorkel mask with a balloon thingy attached and slap it on your face. Would you? Really?

Let’s face it, lying in a hospital bed all wheezy and pale with cannulas in your veins and tubes shoved up your never-regions is not exactly dignified. To then have your head cocooned in what resembles Darth Vader’s summer dress helmet seems like adding insult to injury. Particularly if you remember that full-face snorkelling masks have inherent flaws that mean they aren’t much good for snorkelling and those same inherent flaws will probably mean they aren’t much good as ventilators either. This would be a stopgap at best, a temporary make-do solution to the very real problem of not having enough proper ventilators in the first place. And it will make your wheezing even worse, when it dawns on you that not only may you die because your hospital hasn’t got enough proper medical equipment, you may suffer an even worse indignity and actually be saved by a $30 beach toy. This of course would be catastrophic for healthcare systems around the world as public confidence is eroded by news of your miraculous survival.

After all what’s the point of ploughing loads of money into healthcare? Why should doctors and nurses go through all that training and what have all those research and development scientists being doing for years if the solution to treating Covid patients turns out to be a spotty student in a shed in Belgium who’s stuck a plastic thingy on a mask designed for fat people to go snorkelling in? That’s like a an Olympic skier finding out that he’d probably be better off slapping two planks of wood to his feet or an aircraft designer discovering that propellers really do work better when powered by elastic bands. It’s just too mad to think about. Science, medicine and research the world over would be a laughing stock.

But before you get all hot under the collar at such a thought we can ease yours and our own discomfort a little. You see despite myriad articles on the web explaining how and why these masks are being reconfigured, there is no actual evidence that we can find to prove that they have worked as ventilators at all. Yes there are a lot of clever people out there fiddling with things and trying to prove to their wives that the 3-d printer they bought wasn’t a waste of money but are they actually achieving anything other than publicity? We’re not so sure.

Old-School

So perhaps it’s not quite time to throw the towel in on developing proper ventilators and other medical kit. And maybe engine designers shouldn’t rush to invest in rubber just yet.

Our discomfort about all of this is further eased by the fact that these masks may have a role as personal protective equipment. Clearly the purpose of any PPE is to provide a barrier to the infection and these masks do that as long as they are fitted with a filter. Although the nurses and doctors working in ITU will probably not be too thrilled to wear them. If your putting your life on the line in Covid wards we imagine that you’d probably prefer to be wearing a certified mask that has been safety checked and tested to ensure it does actually provide protection rather than being handed something that’s been knocked up in a Berlin apartment by a student dress designer called Otto.

Still that doesn’t mean that members of the public couldn’t make use of them to help in the easing of lockdown. Mr and Mrs Average Joe can wear them as they go go about their daily business right? Well yes, as long as that business doesn’t actually mean moving about much. You see as we pointed out, these masks have inherent flaws in their design. The manufacturers even state in their marketing guff that if you use them for snorkelling, which is what they were designed for remember, you cannot swim with them on or exert yourself too much as you will quickly find that the design hinders your breathing. That’s right, the Easy-breath suddenly becomes the very hard-to-breath. So we imagine if you were wearing these things as a anti-covid mask while walking to work or heaven forbid, running for a bus, you are likely to end up needing one of those real ventilators that hospitals have run out of.

Still if you have one of those masks at the back of the wardrobe and it’s in a colour you like you might want to put it on, sit yourself down and loose yourself in the 24 hour television coverage of doom and gloom. But then if you’re staying in doing nothing, why do you need a mask at all?

For more in-depth info on why we dislike these masks read our over posts here and here. Or you can read an excellent critique of them on Scuba Doctor here.

Oh one last thing, We do know the difference between BIPAP, CPAP and Ventilators. And we know that the retrofit is geared towards BIPAP but since the media everywhere are referring to them as ventilators (which shows that a lot of people don't know what they're talking about) we thought we would refer to them in the same way. Now, tongues back out of cheeks please.....

One Drowning Too Many! Full-Face Snorkelling Masks And One Man’s Quest For Answers

In February 2016 we wrote post about the spread of full-face masks. In that post and its forerunner we highlighted the fact that the full-face design is inherently flawed. We weren’t the only ones who had our doubts about these masks either. Even the manufacturers own literature pointed out a number of innate problems, one of which was, that if you attempted to swim whilst wearing the mask you soon found out that you couldn’t get enough air to breathe. In short if you got in to difficulty in the water and needed to swim for safety, you were going to have to remove the mask or risk suffocating. The full-face design also risks CO2 build up and if it leaks, vision and breathing are compromised simultaneously. As we said in posts, these are rather serious flaws in a mask that is marketed at people who don’t like getting their faces wet! Swimming, breathing and being able to see simultaneously are, you’d think, rather important for snorkellers and any mask that compromises all three so readily was, in our opinion, a pretty poor product all round.

Judging by the comments we received, a great number of people had suffered serious problems whilst using full-face masks. One comment, however, stood out. That comment came from Guy Cooper. Guy’s wife tragically died whilst snorkelling in Pohoiki Bay, Hawaii. Now, we could write a dozen posts about what happened that day and a dozen more about Guy’s tenacious search for answers but we’d rather he told you himself.  Below is the address that Guy gave to The State Drowning and Aquatic Injury Prevention Advisory Committee, Honolulu, Hawaii on March 15^th this year and has kindly permitted us to use. We have not edited the address or amended it in anyway. This is Guy’s story and these are his words.

I’m here to talk about snorkeling.  I have to preface that by saying I’m by no means an expert.  In fact, I’ve never been snorkeling.  So, I’ll explain what brought me here.  Many of you already know my story.

I lost my wife to a snorkeling accident this past September.  Soon as I got word, I caught the first flight over here.  This is my third trip since then, trying to understand what happened— visiting the site, speaking and corresponding with police, 1st responders, ocean safety officials, doctors, divers and the woman who managed to get Nancy to shore.

Pohoiki Bay was calm that day.  Nancy went in the water with a buddy.  As was her habit, she floated passively on the surface so as not to “scare the little fishes”.  After about 30 minutes her buddy left her side to dive off the rocks.  (He should never have done that.)  Returning to the rocks after one dive, he realized he couldn’t spot Nancy.  After some minutes of scanning the water, he heard and saw a woman surfer across the Bay waving her arms and yelling for help.  A few young guys jumped in and helped her and Nancy to shore.  CPR was performed, but she was gone.  She had been in the water less than an hour, in Hawaii less than 24 hours.

A little background.  Nancy was 70 years old.  She was not a novice snorkeler. nor a stranger to snorkeling Hawaiian waters.  She swam laps nearly everyday.  We had just hiked all over the hills of southern Italy.  We enjoyed biking, hiking, snow shoeing, kayaking.  As a young girl she was recruited by a professional water skiing team.  Later, she organized river-rafting trips.  She was always physically active and at home in the water. The coroner surmised she must have suffered some acute coronary event that precipitated her drowning.  He referred to a known history of ischemic heart disease.  Don’t know where that info came from.  I was never asked about her medical history nor anything else for that matter.  She had no such history, and even the physical findings of the autopsy contradict that conclusion.  There seems to be a prevalent attitude amongst some over here (Hawaii) that dead tourists were old and in the way.  To my mind, the heart attack assumption just makes the coroner’s job that much easier.

So what did go wrong? I started thinking about that new full-face snorkel mask of hers.  She was so eager to use it in Hawaii.  She tried it out a few times in the local pool before the trip. She bought it on Amazon, so I started perusing those reviews.  I was shocked to read of these masks having inherent, potentially lethal design and manufacturing flaws.  And alarmed that they were being marketed as great for beginners, and kids.  I expanded my search to various snorkeling and dive web sites and learned a lot. These masks have to be strapped tightly around the head to achieve a good seal, yet they still leak, sometimes copiously.  Valves and other structures have been reported failing.  Once they fill with water, there’s no easy, quick way to empty them.  Your mouth and nose are captive together, so there’s no escape.  You can drown in them. There are other reports of snorkelers experiencing air hunger, CO2 build-up and rapid fatigue.  So you can fall victim to dizziness, disorientation, hyperventilation, panic and loss of consciousness.  Then you drown.

My wife was found floating face up with her mask partially pulled up over her nose so that both her nose and mouth were exposed.  That tells me she was in trouble and tried to get the damn thing off, too late. I wondered if there were other reports of fatalities involving these masks.  I looked up reports of snorkeling fatalities and near drowning incidents from around the world.  That’s when I realized, my god, no one is paying any attention!  Not one mention of the gear.  My wife’s mask was just tossed in the trash.  These things could be killing others, and no one knows!  Not only are the risks unrecognized, but I could find no evidence of any independent testing or certification of these things. Wouldn’t you want to know if these masks represent a significant danger?

I started to educate myself about snorkeling in general.  I found it is not exactly the benign, lightweight activity it’s promoted as being.  Many significant physiologic stressors can come into play.  The Australians have coined the phrase Fatal Silent Snorkeling Syndrome.  The Japanese use the term Takotsubo, referred to as the “Broken Heart Syndrome”.  A study out of the Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia identifies a number of inherent stressors.  Dr. Douglas Smith, from Hawaii, promotes Slow, Safe, Snorkel Breathing techniques to counter some of the ventilation issues arising from the sport.  The whole subject of snorkeling physiology begs further study.

So on one hand you have an activity rife with significant physical demands, then you exacerbate the situation by adding a new piece of inadequately vetted equipment with inherent design flaws.  A perfect storm. Look, I’m aware of the demographic considerations.  Hawaiian tourists, like the population in general, aren’t getting any younger.  Many are probably over-extending themselves in this age of “active lifestyles”, and Viagra….

That’s all the more reason to fashion a robust, realistic tourist education effort that both alerts the public to the challenges of snorkeling and teaches them the skills they need to ameliorate the risks.  That will help ensure that the tourists return from their vacation healthy and happy and pass on their positive experiences to others. All I ask is that you give serious consideration to the role of these new masks.  Devote the resources to collect the data.  Incorporate the data in incident reports and data bases.  Look for trends.  Make the coroner aware of their use.  Secure the gear as evidence.  Only then will you truly be able to assess the risk.

Some have said there just aren’t many of these new masks out there yet.  No action needed.  I suspect there will be more. It could be that my wife’s death represents the very first fatality involving a full-face mask.  Well, one’s enough for me.

Nancy Peacock’s death was a tragedy but there have been tragedies before. Hawaii has a notorious reputation for snorkelling related drownings and one more fatality in those sparkling waters could easily have been passed over were it not for one man who kept asking questions. Since Guy gave that address, Lifeguards in Maui have begun tracking equipment worn by snorkellers who drown in their jurisdiction and other counties of Hawaii appear poised to do the same. Health officials and safety experts in Hawaii are looking at collecting the data necessary to better evaluate full-face masks and possibly even conduct controlled scientific studies on it and we’re sure that it won’t be long before other officials from other nations start doing the same. Guy Cooper may, single-handedly, brought about the biggest change in snorkelling safety ever!

The full story and further material can be found on the Civil Beat website - follow the links. Again we liked to thank Guy for letting us publish his address in full. We wish you all the best Guy and as snorkellers, we thank you.

Guy Coopers story

Counties to track equipment in snorkelling deaths

Fatal Silent Snorkeling Syndrome Facebook page