Life cycle assessment of Tehran’s COVID-19 facemasks and prediction of environmental impacts using machine learning

Facemasks have been extensively used during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this study aims to find out the environmental impacts of three types of prevalent facemasks in Tehran to select a suitable option for future epidemics. The environmental impacts of facemasks were investigated from cradle to grave in complete incineration and landfill scenarios using the ReCiPE (H) 2016 method. The environmental burden results at endpoint levels were predicted using machine learning algorithms. The results showed that 3-layer surgical masks, 3-dimensional (3D) masks, and washable masks were predominant in Tehran, accounting for 80.1