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How Speaking Creates Droplets That May Spread COVID-19 High-speed video reveals the process that produces airborne saliva droplets during speech and also shows that lip balm can reduce droplet production. By David Ehrenstein O ne way that COVID-19 spreads is through saliva droplets emitted during speech, but the precise mechanism that creates the droplets in the mouth is not well understood. Now Manouk Abkarian of the University of Montpellier, France, and Howard Stone of Princeton University have recorded high-speed video of the mouth of a volunteer speaking various sounds [1]. The duo uncovered the droplet production process and identified the consonants, such as "p" and "t," that most effectively generate droplets when spoken. They also found that lip balm interferes with droplet formation and can dramatically reduce the number of droplets emitted. Abkarian and Stone found that when the mouth makes the sounds "p" or "b," saliva forms a thin sheet across the lip gap, and this sheet quickly breaks up into vertical filaments. The researchers determined that a property of saliva called The worst you could say. Certain consonants, such as "p" and "b," produce more droplets than others, according to experiments.

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