Fact check: Face masks are safe for children, help prevent COVID-19 spread

Daniel Funke, USA TODAY
·6 min read

The claim: Face masks create dangerous levels of carbon dioxide for children

The TikTok video shows a blond child wearing a white face mask. To her left, an orange device takes readings.

"1,376. 1,536. 1,769," a voice says in the clip. "2,125. So remember: Anything over 2,000 is unacceptable."

Text overlaid on the video reads, "CO2 levels in a child's mask," and, "unmask your kids."

The clip was published Oct. 27 on Facebook by Robert Clancy, an Australian pastor with more than 63,000 followers. Clancy wrote in his caption that "any Carbon Dioxide concentrations above 2000ppm is (sic) dangerous!"

"Will the same affect you?!" he wrote. "Calmly think! #SaveOurChildren."

Clancy's post accumulated more than 22,000 views within two days. Similar claims have racked up tens of thousands of interactions on Facebook and Instagram, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool.

But the post is wrong. Public health agencies debunked similar claims months ago, and experts say all available evidence suggests face masks are safe for children.

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"There appears to be no solid evidence to support the claim that wearing masks exposes children to a high build-up of CO2," Layla Kwong, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California-Berkeley, said in an email.

USA TODAY reached out to Clancy for comment.

Face masks don't create dangerous CO2 levels

Public health officials, independent fact-checking organizations and experts who have studied face masks say they do not cause children to inhale dangerous levels of carbon dioxide.

"The prolonged use of medical masks can be uncomfortable. However, it does not lead to CO2 intoxication nor oxygen deficiency," Tarik Jašarević, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization, said in an email. "While wearing a medical mask, make sure it fits properly and that it is tight enough to allow you to breathe normally."

Carbon dioxide readers like the ones pictured in the video are available online and at some hardware stores. But experts say they aren't the best way to measure fluctuations in CO2 levels.

"There are two problems with this," Dr. Susan Hopkins, a professor at the University of California-San Diego who has studied the effects of face masks on lung function, said in an email. "You are not making the correct comparison, which would be making measurements right at the mouth without the mask and with the mask. And you don’t have a device that has the sensitivity to make the measurements in the first place."

Hopkins said devices like the one pictured in the TikTok video are designed for "steady-state conditions," such as measuring a room's CO2 levels.

"You can’t actually see with the device the concentration of CO2 that the person is inspiring – only some kind of average between what they are breathing in and what they are breathing out," she said.

On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends "everyone 2 years of age or older who is not fully vaccinated should wear a mask in indoor public places." That's primarily because face masks prevent the spread of respiratory droplets to other people, who then may be infected with COVID-19.

The CDC has debunked the claim that wearing a face mask increases the amount of CO2 someone inhales.

"CO2 molecules are much smaller than viruses and can easily pass through any cloth mask material," the CDC wrote in a December tweet.

One study widely cited as evidence for the potential harm of children wearing face masks was retracted in July. Other research has found that face masks commonly used during the pandemic, including cloth face coverings and surgical masks, do not impair oxygen intake. Some studies have found that even wearing face masks during exercise doesn't affect lung function.

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"In these areas where the instrument (in the video) is used, there is (a) logical chance that exhaled CO2 gets recorded," Seshadri Ramkumar, an environmental toxicology professor at Texas Tech University, said in an email. "But studies do not show any alarming effect."

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that face masks create dangerous levels of carbon dioxide for children. Experts say using the kind of device pictured in the video is not a reliable way to measure variations in CO2 levels. Public health agencies recommend children older than 2 years old wear face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Research suggests face masks do not cause a dangerous buildup of CO2.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Face masks don't create dangerous CO2 buildup for children