How are cloth face masks like underwear? Rules for cleaning are the same, experts say

If you’re wearing a face mask routinely, you should treat it like underwear, experts say.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended wearing cloth face coverings while in public to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus. In some places, face masks are required each time you leave the house or go into businesses.

Those face coverings, however, get dirty if worn too long without washing them.

“You don’t take this dirty mask off, put it in your purse and then stick it back on your face,” Dr. Daniel Griffin, an expert on infectious diseases at Columbia University, told NPR in April. “It’s something that once you put on, is potentially either touching your coughs, sneezes or the spray of your speech, or protecting you from the coughs, spray, speech of other people. And now it’s dirty. It needs to basically be either discarded or washed.”

Griffin told the news outlet to think of a mask like a pair of underwear that needs washing after each use.

Other experts agree. The CDC said face masks should be washed routinely depending on how frequently they are being worn. The Mayo Clinic recommends cloth face coverings be washed after every day of use.

Some experts say you should “treat your face mask the same way you would treat your hands,” and wash it after each use or any time it could be exposed to the coronavirus, SFGate reported.

The CDC recommends throwing your mask in the washing machine to clean it. Regular laundry detergent and hot water can clean cloth face masks sufficiently, Mayo Clinic said.

This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 2:26 PM with the headline "How are cloth face masks like underwear? Rules for cleaning are the same, experts say."