As the chart above shows (interactive version here), North Carolina is still a dangerous outcropping in a sea of freedom when it comes to forcing schoolchildren to wear masks on their faces.

Breathing in “hazardous waste”

The issue isn’t a mere matter of a state dress code ordered by a rogue executive, although that is bad enough. As discussed here previously, recent studies into masks have sounded the alarm about the dangerous “chemical cocktails” which the wearer necessarily breathes in. They warn that “mask wearers unwittingly run the risk of breathing in carcinogens, allergens and tiny synthetic microfibres by wearing both textile and nonwoven surgical masks for long periods of time” and that even surgical face masks contained “elevated concentrations of hazardous fluorocarbons, formaldehyde and other potentially carcinogenic substances.”

As one of the researchers put it, “What we are breathing through our mouth and nose is actually hazardous waste.”

The greater danger of children’s face masks is that Gov. Roy Cooper, state health bureaucrat Mandy Cohen, complicit schools systems, and other antiscientific child-maskers foment this fiction that small children with cloth masks strapped on their noses and mouths day in and out will be as fastidious and careful with them as are highly trained medical professionals with surgical face masks.

Deadly pathogens accumulate on kids’ masks in a single day

New findings out of Florida highlight the risks Cooper, Cohen, et al. are forcing on children all across North Carolina:

A group of parents in Gainesville, FL, sent 6 face masks to a lab at the University of Florida, requesting an analysis of contaminants found on the masks after they had been worn. The resulting report found that five masks were contaminated with bacteria, parasites, and fungi, including three with dangerous pathogenic and pneumonia-causing bacteria. Although the test is capable of detecting viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, only one virus was found on one mask (alcelaphine herpesvirus 1).

They weren’t masks that had been worn for days and days without washing, however:

The face masks studied were new or freshly-laundered before wearing and had been worn for 5 to 8 hours, most during in-person schooling by children aged 6 through 11. One was worn by an adult. A t-shirt worn by one of the children to school and unworn masks were tested as controls. No pathogens were found on the controls; samples from the front top and bottom of the t-shirt found proteins that are commonly found in skin and hair, along with some commonly found in soil. …

The parents contracted with the lab because they were concerned about the potential of contaminants on masks that their children were forced to wear all day at school, taking them on and off, setting them on various surfaces, wearing them in the bathroom, etc. This prompted them to send the masks to the University of Florida’s Mass Spectrometry Research and Education Center for analysis.

Here’s what was found:

Half of the masks were contaminated with one or more strains of pneumonia-causing bacteria. One-third were contaminated with one or more strains of meningitis-causing bacteria. One-third were contaminated with dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens. In addition, less dangerous pathogens were identified, including pathogens that can cause fever, ulcers, acne, yeast infections, strep throat, periodontal disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and more.

Dare North Carolina parents hope those results and findings in the other studies can’t possibly apply here?