Product Review: Vog Mask

(Forgive my formatting - a lot of blogger features don't work on my phone.)


I bought a Vog Mask:


http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KVIWMI4


It's made with organic cotton and features two respirators. The filter is made of carbon. I bought it mainly for flying, but I expect I'll get use out of it at home too.

Did it work?

I was doing well with it on the flights. I wasn't feeling well anyway, but I didn't feel I was getting worse on the planes. Until people used the lavatory. Every time someone came out of the lavatory a tsunami of fragrance filled the cabin. I believe this is Delta's signature fragrance named "Calm." I smelled it through my mask and it made me nauseous. I don't know how much stronger it would have been without the mask, but it was really bothering my non-MCS husband. This was a major issue for me on all 3 flights. I have written Delta about the health problems of their signature fragrance twice and never received a reply.

I wasn't able to wear the mask in the airports because I needed to eat and drink while I wasn't on the plane. I felt perfectly irritated and over exhausted by the end if the day, feeling very polluted and crabby. I only felt instant reactions twice in the airports, but I wasn't well enough to recover. I took extra glutathione and NAC, which helped quite a bit.

Despite wearing a mask, I ended up with a nasty flu-like virus. It made itself known 2 days later after flying, the perfect incubation time, but I was having a lot of stomach distress the first two days.

So, did the mask work? I think it must have to some degree, because I wasn't in too bad of a reaction when the trip was over. I was very uncontrollably irritable and moody, like I always get in a reaction, but I wasn't suffering many of my obvious reaction symptoms. In comparison, a few days later I spent a couple of minutes in the body care aisle at Whole Foods without my mask and spent the rest of the day reacting harshly. It was a very delayed reaction, by about 3-4 hours, but I was also fighting the flu-like virus. (Whole Foods needs to learn to put unscented products in separate aisles!)

 

As for comfort level, the mask is pretty good. The size large fit my face well, and the ear hoops didn't pull on my ears at all. I was able to breathe normally because of the dual respirators (I wouldn't want to try a single respirator kind as I would think it would be too stuffy.)  It did cover my face well, but it wasn't as close of a fit as some might need. If I talked the sides didn't stay snug with my cheeks, but the gaps between my cheek and mask were very small. The metal over the nose was perfectly adjustable and long enough to ensure a good fit.

For $30, yes, it's much much better than nothing. It will not be nearly enough for severe MCS people, but it might be enough for most light- moderate MCS people. I was hoping for more protection, but the real problem wasn't my mask, it was Delta's overpowering extra strong lavatory fragrance.