Polyester and nylon masks, on the other hand, “repel water from your breath, so there’s no added benefit.” Through his work, Vicenzi has explored the unseen world of face-covering materials.

The research found that laundering an average washing load of 6kg, could release an estimated 137,951 fibres from polyester-cotton blend fabric, 496,030 fibres from polyester and 728,789 from acrylic.

Back in the lab, the researchers painstakingly separated the plastic from the sand; the process involved, among other things, hand-plucking microscopic fibers from filter papers. A chemical analysis ...

Studying fabrics at very high magnification helps determine how some face masks filter out particles better than others. And the close-ups reveal an unseen beauty of the mundane objects that have ...