I'm a master student in the university of Geneva. I have to find a scientific paper of the degradation of the surgical mask to add it in my master's thesis.
I only found non-scientific journals talking about it but they don't put their sources
It's depend on environmental condition. Actually not easy to find exact result on surgical mask but you can calculate from result on degradation rate of PP. Considering the Chamas et al. (ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2020, 8, 9, 3494–3511) degradation rate of PP in marine environments is approx. 10 um/year but lower than 1 um/year in land.
I am starting to look at screening microorganism for the degradation of masks . If I come across a good publication I will let you know. you are welcome to contact me : [email protected]