A Subject Coughing in a Cyclic Incident (IMAGE) American Institute of Physics Caption A subject coughing in a cyclic incident. A qualitative examination of airborne droplet transmission with and without wearing a surgical mask. The figures show the results at 2, 3, 4 and 5 seconds. Wearing a surgical mask that exhibits initial efficiency of approximately 91% cannot prevent the transport of the saliva droplets away from the subject. Many droplets penetrate the mask shield and some saliva droplet disease-carrier particles can travel more than 1.2 meters. For visualization, the droplets were scaled by a factor of 600 compared to their actual size. The environmental conditions are zero wind speed, ambient temperature 20 degrees C, pressure of 1 atmosphere, and relative humidity 50%. The mouth temperature is 34 degrees C, and the face skin temperature is 32 degrees C. Credit Talib Dbouk and Dimitris Drikakis Usage Restrictions Journalists may use this image only with appropriate credit. License Licensed content Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.