Thursday, May 26, 2022

A KN-95 mask and a pair of air tight goggles might keep you out of the hospital during a sandstorm

 The KN-95 mask filters out about 95% of particulate matter which is good filtering out Covid sprays in the air from people breathing or coughing who are infected. But, it also filters out small sand particles that could lodge in your lungs and prevent you from breathing properly and oxygenating your blood during a sand storm where you are (in the western States near deserts or in the Middle East) when winds are blowing hard enough to move sand from one place through the air to another place. 

Goggles can keep your eyes free from sand particles that are small enough to be in the air around you also.

Though it doesn't stop sand from sanding your skin off it does prevent you going to the hospital with breathing or eye problems with eyes full of sandy small particles and scratchiness.

However, if you are directly out in the sand blowing you also need to protect your face, hands and other parts of your body from the sand hitting it and sanding off your skin to the point where you start bleeding from sand hitting you. One way I did this when I was mountain climbing around 1970 was that I carried greenhouse plastic for sliding down on the snow on Mt. San Gorgonio in Southern California when I was climbing this mountain in southern California in the winter time. 

As I reached the summit about a 100 mph wind was blowing and ice crystals were cutting the skin on my face blowing at this speed. So, I took the plastic for sliding down on the snow and covered my face with it to protect my face from the ice hitting it. I finally gave up summiting because my hearing was being impaired by the sound of ice hitting the plastic covering my face was just so very loud. So, finally I walked over to a snow slope and slid down the mountain using my snow shoes as a brake from about 11,000 feet down to around 9000 to 10,000 feet so I could put back on my snow shoes and walk down the valley towards where my car was parked a several miles away.

However, the snow fell through hanging me upside down from my snow shoes when I walked over a manzinita bush under the snow so then I was hanging upside down in a manzinita bush under the snow where I had broken through down to the bush. Then I had to take off the snow shoes that were caught on the branches and slide down into the bush which isn't called ironwood for nothing. So, now I'm all bloody from the ironwood branches cutting me various places and I had to climb up out of there and put back on my snow shoes and try to find a way forward where there might not be any more manzinita bushes where I might fall through the snow into again. Somehow I succeeded in not falling through any more manzinita or ironwood bushes and avoided being cut up anymore that day.

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