When you buy a brand new mask there is manufacturing residue left on the lenses that causes the mask to chronically fog up. Over time 10-20 uses this manufacturing residue will get worn away and then simply spitting in your mask will defog it perfectly.

That said you might still find your mask fogs up on some days and not on others. This is because impurities like dirt, or oil residue from your finger tips or even sun screen has gotten onto the lens and are causing it to fog up. In these circumstances what you need to do is simple clean the lens. This is why people recommend using baby shampoo. Using shampoo is just basically cleaning the lenses with soap. People recommend baby shampoo because it is non irritating to the eyes in the event that you do not rinse the mask properly.

Back to the issue of brand new masks and manufacturing residue on the lenses. If you are impatient and don’t want to wait 20-30 uses for this residue to naturally wear away you can use toothpaste (white preferable) to accelerate the degradation of this residue. Simply apply a dab of toothpaste to the inside of the lenses and spread it evenly with your finger tips, all over every millimeter of the lenses. Then leave the mask like that over night . The toothpaste should corrode the manufacturing residue and in the morning you can simply rinse the toothpaste off. When you go into the water you will still need to spit in your mask or use commercial defog to defog your mask. This should work! If it still fogs up a little, re-do the toothpaste step again. Unfortunately this is the process to breaking in a mask and getting it just right.

Finally, if you are REALLY impatient (like me) what you can do to solve this problem immediately is take a lighter and burn the inside of the lenses. This sounds scary but it is really easy. Watch this video to see what I am talking about Just be careful to not put the flame directly onto the silicone. Burn the entire surface of the lenses from the inside until you start to see the lenses get black/dirty or covered in soot. This is the residue of the manufacturing gunk getting burned off. Simple rinse that residue off after and use your mask remembering to again spit in it or use commercial defog.

This works I assure you. Just remember that regardless of what step you take, if you get dirt, oils or sunscreen on your lenses you will need to wash that off with soap (preferably baby shampoo) again before you use your mask. Watch this video again to summarize some of the stuff I talked about here.