Regarding the mask issue:  you don't wear a mask to protect yourself during the routine administration of OAV in a well-maintained set of hive boxes.  

You wear a mask to protect yourself when the unexpected happens and you must urgently remove the wand before the cook-off cycle is completed.  The roiling plume of uncontained and still actively sublimating OA crystals is pretty scary and I was immensely grateful I was fully masked up as I had no time to fit it on my face. Just pulled the wand and extinguished it in the bucket of water.  I have had only two of these events, however, so it is a very rare thing. I wear my seat belt, though I've never been in a car crash.

One other time when I was studying the wand's dispersion pattern in a glass-topped simulated hive I got a tiny snort of the crystals due to leaning down directly over the glass and having slightly dislodged the seal on my mask.  It was ghastly. These tiny acid particles (which look like smoke, but aren't gaseous,  by the time you breathe in) immediately start tiny chemical burns whenever they encounter moisture.  Our respiratory tracts are lined with moist surfaces. You feel like you want to cough it out, but of course you can't. Fortunately, it was such a small dose that I sustained no long term damage.

A self-contained respirator is probably overkill, but I think there are some intermediate-level 3M ones, with full face protection that might work with beards.  Since the danger is really the particles, perhaps some form of a periscope -like fabric hood snugged around the firm parts of the mask's body would reduce the blow-past risk sufficiently.

When I was younger I was a volunteer firefighter who did interior attack wearing self-contained breathing equipment so maybe adjusting to mask wearing was easier for me.  But I have worked with some of my students who felt desperately claustrophobic when they first donned a 3M OAV mask. The trick is to wear the mask indoors, at first, when sitting quietly to get the feel for the slightly higher effort of breathing. Then move on to  just moving around a bit, perhaps doing the dishes, or some other light task.  After that work up through easy, then brisk walking; then try a jog or short run to prove to your mind that you *will* get enough air through the filters.  It used to be that the first few minutes of the first treatments of the year made me feel the effort a bit. But regularly wearing the mask for months during Covid whenever I had to buy groceries cured me of that.

Just putting on the mask, isn't enough. You must do a quick fit check every time, to make sure you have a good seal. Every mask comes with instructions on how to do it for both inhale and exhale cycles. Do it even if your mask has only been off for a few seconds.

Nancy

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