When you wear a conventional fabric mask and glasses when grocery shopping, you may meet the Fogging Menace. I co-designed a mask with the folks at ColorUpLife to address this problem. We worked the problem and co-designed a glasses-friendly design improvement we call the FogFender™Facemask
You have two hollows between your nose and cheekbones Under a typical fabric type mask, the hollows channel breath up under your glasses, leading to possible fogging. Two special pockets at the top of the FogFender are made hold crumpled tissue or cotton balls and block off these hollows. We have found this greatly reduces the tendency for fogging.
If you already have a conventional fabric mask, you can approximate this result by wadding two tissue pieces, put on your mask, and stuffing the wads down along both sides of your nose. Wash hands thoroughly before doing this and avoid touching your face.
The purpose of fabric masks is primarily, to protect others from the contents of your breath. There may also be some undetermined benefit in protecting yourself. The FogFender design is not better at filtering air. It does reduce the tendency to fog glasses, sunglasses, and protective eyewear when wearing the mask. We know fogging makes some people reluctant to wear a mask (by our own experience). Eliminating any barrier to safe behavior makes us safer.
We are sharing this variation on mask construction for free to Makers. Many people are rising to the task to producing some of the millions of fabric masks that are now needed by the public. We are making what we can, but its a drop in an ocean;
We hope that other Makers will make and sell the FogFender design along with their other facemasks. More than 50% of the US population wears glasses for vision correction, not counting sunglasses and protective eyewear wearers.
The Free FogFender sewing instructions
are available at ColorupLife.com (that is Sandi's company).
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