Face masks may protect hog farm workers and their household members from staph bacteria

In the study, which is published on December 13 in Environmental Health Perspectives, the scientists tracked 101 hog farm workers and 79 household members for four months, taking nasal swabs and asking questions about face mask use. They found that for workers who reported using face masks on the job consistently during the four-month study, there was a 50 to 70 % reduction in the likelihood of finding dangerous, livestock-derived S. aureus strains in their swabs--and an 80 to 90 % reduction in the likelihood that household members' swabs would test positive for such strains. "Face masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) could be effective in reducing occupational exposure to livestock-associated S. aureus and preventing the spread of these bacteria to workers and their families," says study senior author Christopher D. Heaney, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Bloomberg School. In the U.S. and many other developed countries, hogs are raised in dense populations on industrial-scale farms, and are fed antibiotics to treat and prevent diseases, which also promotes animal growth. This chronic use of antibiotics…