Masks designed for singers can help stop COVID-19 spread

By Georgia Lambert via SWNS

Wearing a special 'singer's' face mask while belting out a tune will help stop the spread of coronavirus , without distorting your vocals, suggests a new study.

When people burst into song, they are at risk of releasing harmful particles such as coronavirus into the atmosphere around them.

But while wearing a mask prevents virus transmission, they often affect the sound quality.

To find out if there were certain masks that would allow singers to protect others while projecting, Dr. Thomas Moore, from Rollins College in Florida, roped in professional soprano singers to test six types of masks while performing.

The professor of physics found that masks effectively block aerosols, which instead, force the breath to exit at the sides of the face.

Moore explained that he observed as the aerosols then traveled upward, rising with the flow of body heat from the singer.

Moore then confirmed that this dispersal of breath likely dilutes the virus and prevents the spread of coronavirus from person to person.

His findings revealed that at low frequencies, the masks reduced the volume of the singing, but they did not have other effects on the vocals, such as the pitch.

However, masks did reduce the power of higher frequencies, which made the enunciation of words less clear whilst altering the quality of the tone.

One of the masks tested was a singer's mask, which, as the name suggests, was designed specifically with singers in mind.

While all six of the other masks blocked the forward flow of breath, the singer's mask did so with the least amount of change in the sound.

"A normal cloth mask can reduce the high frequencies by as much as ten times, but a singer's mask will reduce them by a factor of less than two," Moore said.

"Diluting virus-causing aerosols is key to reducing infection and the spread of the COVID-19 virus."

Although Moore found that breath still escaped the sides of the masks, its rise into the air and subsequent dispersal still lower the risk of virus transmission, compared to singing without a mask.

He went on to emphasize how critical good airflow in a room is for preventing a viral risk.

Moore presented the findings at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Seattle.