Using a shirt as a gas mask
From BearWiki
Claim: A shirt will not protect you against volcanic gasses.
Let's quickly do a comparison of gas masks designed for stopping chemicals versus a shirt:
Gas mask:
- Seals tightly around the nose and mouth
- Contains a micron-scale particulate filter to remove dust
- Activated carbon reacts with many toxic compounds, neutralizing them:
- Other filter barriers for specific toxins
Shirt:
- Porous. Generally lets everything but macroscopic dust through.
- Multiple layers of fine-weave cloth can reduce concentrations of certain bacteria when water is strained through it, but only because they tend to be attached to particulates and plankton.[1]
- Largely inert; will not react with gasses of any kind.
A shirt simply is not a gas mask. The toxic gasses from volcanoes, such as sulfur oxides and sulfuric, hydrogen chloride and hydrochloric acid, carbon monoxide, asphyxiating carbon dioxide, and so on, simply have no chemical means to react with a shirt, nor are they even close to being too large for the weave to block.
There may be some logic to using a wet shirt as a gas mask (sulfur oxides and hydrogen chloride can be absorbed into water), but I am unable to locate a study suggesting that even this is effective. If you are having trouble breathing, don't waste time messing with your shirt -- get out of there.
