Jesse's CornerOutdoor Life Starts Here

Anti Pollution Masks for Cyclists

If you live in or near a city centre you will find that there is a growing trend towards getting to work on a bicycle. One of the biggest reasons for this is likely to be cost. It costs you nothing to cycle to work and when you compare this to the cost of congestion charges in London and the increasing costs of taxis, buses and trains it seems to be a no-brainer.

Another reason for wanting to ride to work on your bike is combatting congestion. Our major city centres can become gridlocked very easily during rush hour. You can beat this congestion on your bike because you can go places that cars and buses can’t.

Herein lies one of the risks of cycling to work though, and that is the risk to your health caused by all the fumes emitted by that congested traffic. The very fact that you are cycling means that you are likely to be breathing heavier than you normally would and this increases the risk to your health even more. Breathing in all those fumes as you cycle along can lead to breathing and asthma related problems.

To try and overcome this problem, companies such as Respro have come out with a number of products to help you protect yourself from the harm caused by traffic fumes.

There are a number of different approaches to the problem though and it doesn’t necessarily pay to just go for the cheapest mask you can find as it may not really be that effective. There are some cheaper masks you can buy that are designed to be disposable and they will offer you varying degrees of protection but you need to take into account how often you are likely to use them. If you find that you will be using them every day, or if you are cycling to and from work, twice per day then the relatively smaller cost of these masks become insignificant as you will be using too many to see the benefit.

Respro’s ranges of face masks with removable and replaceable filters may be the way to go as replacing the filters will be less expensive than continually replacing the mask. They too offer varying levels of protection from pollution and dirt.

I say varying because some masks perform better than others in different situations so you need to be sure that what you are buying will do the job. My advice would be to read up on each of the products you are thinking of buying very carefully so that you can be assured of buying something that will actually work well in your particular situation.

About the Author

In recent tests carried out by Health Which? magazine, the Respro Techno masks and upgrade kits performed very well. Checkout the Respro range of face masks on the BicycleStuff.co.uk website.

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