How To Avoid Foggy Glasses When Wearing a Face Mask

More people every day are taking to wearing masks to slow the spread of coronavirus COVID-19. And more people every day are discovering that wearing a mask causes their eyeglasses to fog up. It turns out there are a few simple things you can do to avoid this.

First: Wash your glasses. Actually, there are two really good reasons for doing this. One, our glasses are really good at attracting airborne particles like coronavirus and other germs, washing the whole set of spectacles can reduce our exposure to these things. I've been washing my glasses with dish soap in my kitchen sink for years, you can submerge  the whole pair into the soapy water and clean not only the lenses, but the nose pads and ear pieces as well. I asked my optometrist one time if this was an acceptable way to clean prescription glasses and she enthusiastically endorsed it. It also turns out that washing the lenses in soapy water reduces the amount of water droplets that stick to the surface of the glasses. That's reason number two for keeping them clean.

Second: Make sure that the mask you have fits as well as possible at the top edge. The more you can reduce the amount of warm breath escaping from the top of the mask the more you'll reduce the amount of fogging on your glasses. There are about as many different mask designs as there are people wearing them at the moment, if yours has a stiffening device at the top make sure it is adjusted to fit your face as snugly as you can get it. If your mask is just cloth you can get fancy and come up with some sort of wire or foil device to roll into the top or just slide the mask up as far as you can and place your glasses over it. The nose pieces will hold the mask against your face simply by being outside the mask.

While you'll still probably experience a little bit of fogging no matter what you do it's important to remember that wearing a mask does as much or more to protect the people around you from any germs that you may exhale as it does to protect you from them. The more people who wear masks the safer we'll all be as we make our way through the COVID-19 pandemic.