Our Favorite Mask for Workers: AirPop

Get 10% off your first AirPop order with the code LASTMILE.

Last Mile does not receive any payment or other benefit from Airpop or any other commercial entity.

There are a lot of mask companies out there. And there are even more now due to COVID-19.

To help people navigate this changing landscape, we sought to find the safest and most comfortable mask for individuals working day in and day out in their communities. And Last Mile is proud to announce that we’ve partnered with AirPop, a company that makes custom-designed medical-grade performance, air-filtering face masks for personal and public health.

Our values in inclusive design align with AirPop’s belief that:

1.Safe breathing is a human right.

2. Comfort is not a luxury.

3. Efficacy should not be compromised for aesthetics.

In March 2020, we partnered with AirPop and others to distribute over 300,000 masks to emerging hotspots all around the country as it began to grapple with the pandemic. Given this partnership’s success in getting crucial PPE into the hands of so many of our country’s frontline workers, we’ve decided to join forces yet again, this time in partnership with RETI, to distribute an additional 10,000 custom-engineered masks to healthcare and essential workers in hotspots across the country.

Also, we’ve partnered with AirPop to offer a non-profit discount of 10% off all first orders with the code LASTMILE as part of our new Covid Straight Talk public health education campaign.

Here are a few more reasons why we love AirPop:

AirPop is a design-driven company dedicated to innovating respiratory protection against all airborne threats to human beings (adults and children) everywhere. Since 2015, AirPop has refined and rethought every aspect of the wearing experience of masks as personal protective equipment (PPE). During COVID-19, they applied that innovative thinking to design the Light SE, the first and only mask designed for essential workers.

While the AirPop mask is for everyone, they designed it with workers in high-risk indoor environments in mind. As a result, they have created the most effective and most comfortable respirator plus 3-ply medical mask available on the market today.

FIT

Did you know the conventional N95 mask is designed on an averaged, large male face form because most industrial work was presumed to be done by men? So if any of your masks don’t fit, it’s because it wasn’t designed to fit your face!
Fit is not just about comfort, fit is essential to the mask’s real-world efficacy.
An accurate, and close, fit matters so that aerosols and droplets don’t get in or out. Medical and industrial masks are designed according to the machinery they’re made on, not the humans that wear them.
Human faces are not square or circular but almost all masks are. For example, in China where airborne threats are most severe, AirPop completely reimagined the construction, shape, and fit of a mask by digitally 3D scanning 3,000+ heads and faces that reflect the ergonomic diversity of East Asian face forms.
While AirPop’s products are designed to adaptively fit the natural contour of all human faces, they are currently expanding their scanning database to more specifically conform to the unique diversity of faces that North America represents.
If essential workers are working full shifts, 40 hours a week (8 hrs per day), they need a mask that is comfortable enough to wear for the entire duration with minimal adjusting. That’s why they made a silicone nose bridge so that the mask floats above your face while forming a seal around it, protecting you from the airborne particulate matter.
Through a patented adaptive fit design, AirPop enables protection that exceeds the highest standards for respiratory protection.

FILTRATION

AirPop makes air filtering respirators that block airborne threats down to a diameter of 0.3μ (one millionth of a meter), a size that is invisible to the naked eye.

Ninety-five percent (95%) filtration efficiency is the minimal level of filtration that is approved for an N95 respirator.
AirPop’s filtration efficiency is over ninety-nine percent (99.3%). Due to advanced electrostatic filter media, and lack of exhalation valves, AirPop products provide two-way protection defending both the wearer and those around the wearer.

FUNCTION

Breathability is the important determinant for a comfortable wearing experience. Why? When people have difficulty inhaling and exhaling through the mask they are less likely to wear them and are less likely to keep them on.

AirPop masks have an unparalleled air resistance rating, almost two-thirds lower than the N95 standard specifies.
The more breathable the mask the more likely wearers are to remain protected while they’re out and therefore the safer those around them will be.