Wearing a face mask can temporarily disrupt decision-making in some situations according to University of Queensland research.
Dr David Smerdon from UQ’s School of Economics analysed almost three million chess moves played by more than eight thousand people in 18 countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and found wearing a mask substantially reduced the average quality of player decisions.
“The decrease in performance was due to the annoyance caused by the masks rather than a physiological mechanism, but people adapted to the distraction over time,” Dr Smerdon said.
“The data showed masks were more likely to decrease performance in situations where there was a demanding mental task with a high working memory load.
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2022/12/masks-can-put-cognitive-performance-check
I analyzed the quality of almost 3 million chess moves played by 8,531 individuals (ages 5–98 y) in 18 countries before and during the pandemic. Wearing a mask decreased the quality of players’ decisions—a measure of their cognitive performance—by approximately one-third of an SD
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC99https://sites.google.com/site/no2cog/supporting-evidence/pilot-had-her-faa-medical-certificate-revoked-for-using-a-iud-birth-control81272/ Fresh air has around 0.04% CO
2
, while wearing masks more than 5 min bears a possible chronic exposure to carbon dioxide of 1.41% to 3.2% of the inhaled air. Although the buildup is usually within the short-term exposure limits, long-term exceedances and consequences must be considered due to experimental data. US Navy toxicity experts set the exposure limits for submarines carrying a female crew to 0.8% CO
A significant rise in carbon dioxide occurring while wearing a mask is scientifically proven in many studies, especially for N95-masks (Table 2) due to their higher deadspace and breathing resistance [48].
Fresh air has around 0.04% CO2 while masks bear a possible chronic exposure to low level carbon dioxide of 1.41–3.2% CO2 of the inhaled air in reliable human experiments (Table 1) [64,65,69,71,73].
Animal experimental data shows deleterious proven effects of elevated CO
2
of inhaled air in the long term with threshold values of above 0.3%, 0.5% and 0.8% (Neuron destruction, impaired memory and learning, increased anxiety, destruction of cells in testes
According to the data found, wearing face masks also has the potential to exceed acute (3% CO
2
for 15 min) and chronic (0.5% CO
2
for 8 h) NIOSH limits for CO
2
respiration. Even if these are not exceeded, assuming that time is a toxicological variable equivalent to dose (Haber's rule of inhalation toxicology, also known as c
n
× t
m
= K) [[117], [118], [119]] long term everyday mask use should be further examined, as chronic (repeated) exposure to smaller daily doses
and forcing someone to do a cognitive assessment wearing a mask leads to neurodevelopmental disorders