15 Nov, 2016
One of the tricks we're often told as divers is to always vigorously brush the inside of a new mask for a few minutes with toothpaste to prevent it steaming up underwater.
It just so happens I have a new mask that I didn't do this with and since it was steaming up I thought I'd do an experiment.
First, I scrubbed one side of the inside of the mask with toothpaste for 5 mins. I rinsed it and then put it on my face to steam up. Here is the result:
You can clearly see that the side I brushed didn't steam up at all!
But, perhaps this effect was just because that side had had toothpaste on it, not because of the brushing. To check I covered both sides in toothpaste but didn't brush hard on either side. Here's what the toothpasted mask looked like:
Then I rinsed and put it on again to steam up.
Here's the result:
You can clearly see that the side I has brushed earlier didn't steam up, while again the other did. Even though both had been covered in toothpaste.
This has convinced me that brushing works!
To take the experiment further, it would be good to do a double blind trial. Get one person to toothpaste the whole inside of the mask, vigorously brush just one side for 5 mins and then rinse, then get another person who hasn't seen the brushing to put the mask on for 10 mins and say which side steams up most.
I've always used spit to coat the mask after brushing, but on this trip I found baby shampoo worked really well (baby shampoo doesn't sting as much as normal shampoo if you don't rinse it properly and it goes in your eyes!).
I'd also like to try shaving foam at some point.
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