New study concludes children should not be forced to wear face masks

A group of clinical researchers are urging policy-makers not to require children to wear face masks, after finding that such masks cause a rapid buildup of carbon dioxide in the air breathed in while wearing masks, reported Arutz Sheva's David Rosenberg.In a new study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) entitled Experimental Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Content in Inhaled Air With or Without Face Masks in Healthy Children, Polish researchers found that within just three minutes, the level of carbon dioxide present in the air being breathed in by school children wearing masks was six times higher than the legal limit of 0.2% carbon dioxide by volume (2,000 parts per million), as set by the German Federal Environmental Office. In open-air settings, CO2 levels are about 0.04% by volume, or 400 parts per million."Many governments have made nose and mouth covering or face masks compulsory for schoolchildren," the report says. "The evidence base for this is weak. The question whether nose and mouth covering increases carbon dioxide in inhaled air is crucial."The air being inhaled by mask-wearing children was also five times higher than the baseline carbon dioxide level without a face mask, averaging between 1.312% to 1.391% depending on the mask worn."A recent review concluded that there was ample evidence for adverse effects of wearing such masks," the study concludes. "We suggest that decision-makers weigh the hard evidence produced by these experimental measurements accordingly, which suggest that children should not be forced to wear face masks."The study also cited a large-scale study in Germany, published in the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute this April, which found most children wearing masks suffered from respiratory impairment, declines in oxygen levels, and increased fatigue, as well as more frequent headaches.A large-scale study on face masks conducted by Copenhagen University's Professor Henning Bundgaard last year found that "it would take 300 people wearing a mask for a month to protect one person from getting an infection."The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine designed to test the efficacy of face mask wearing in protecting the wearer from contracting coronavirus, has shown that there is no statistical significance to wearing face masks as protection against COVID-19 infection.