LG's battery-powered face mask will "make breathing effortless":
Big Tech is here to save us from COVID-19! With every responsible, compassionate person running around with a mask on nowadays, it seems inevitable that the phrase "wearable technology" will soon regularly include overly complicated high-tech face masks. One of the first major tech companies out of the gate with a questionably useful product is LG. The "LG PuriCare Wearable Air Purifier" is a battery-powered face mask that the company says will "supply fresh, clean air indoors and out."
[...] A HEPA filter can stop respiratory particles (so does a normal N95 mask), but LG's press release only says the mask will "take in clean, filtered air"—it doesn't say anything about filtering exhalations.
The mask is out it[sic] the fourth quarter in "select markets," but you should probably just wear a normal, lighter, cheaper, more comfortable mask. Please wear a mask.
Call me crazy, but I don't want lithium batteries that close to my face.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @08:51AM
I'd much rather use the homemade hack that a Chinese doctor produced. He wore a plastic bag over his head, a battery-powered HEPA filter on his hip, and a hose to connect them.
That allows easy speech, lip reading, and minimal weight on the head.
Commercial production could improve it. Instead of a fragile bag, a slightly stiffer plastic shell could be used. I'm thinking of the sort of plastic used for 2 L soda bottles. To prevent fogging and rebreathing of exhaled air, the fresh air could descend from the top and pass through a few spandex baffles that wrap around. One would between eyes and nose, and the other would be around the neck.