Narrative:

On the ground in ZZZ during the quick turn my forward flight attendant reported that at altitude the wearing [of] the mask makes her feel terrible. I asked her to describe her symptoms and she described some symptoms similar to hypoxia (dizziness; nausea; headache; etc.). When she does not wear the mask she is fine. I have also heard anecdotally similar complaints from passengers and other fas in the recent past. While I realize that there is a lot of controversy over wearing the mask I am not sure that we should be ignoring the studies that have shown drops in spO2 (blood oxygen saturation) from prolonged mask wearing (assuming these studies were performed close to sea level). The big concern is that our cabins are at 7-8;000 PA and we are asking our flight attendant's to perform the duties of a required flight deck crew member while impaired by hypoxia. In my opinion they would not be fit for duty in this state. We also should be very concerned about the fact that some of these flight attendant's could have either diagnosed or undiagnosed health conditions like asthma that could create a perfect storm of health issues causing an inflight medical emergency. So we have a perfect storm of restricted breathing; high cabin altitudes and possible underlying health conditions that may cause problems for them.suggestion: allow fas to be able to remove the face mask during flight operations. Better yet remove the policy altogether.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier Captain reported being advised by a Flight Attendant that while wearing the COVID-19 type mask Flight Attendant felt hypoxia like symptoms.

Narrative: On the ground in ZZZ during the quick turn my forward Flight Attendant reported that at altitude the wearing [of] the mask makes her feel terrible. I asked her to describe her symptoms and she described some symptoms similar to hypoxia (dizziness; nausea; headache; etc.). When she does not wear the mask she is fine. I have also heard anecdotally similar complaints from passengers and other FAs in the recent past. While I realize that there is a lot of controversy over wearing the mask I am not sure that we should be ignoring the studies that have shown drops in spO2 (blood oxygen saturation) from prolonged mask wearing (assuming these studies were performed close to sea level). The big concern is that our cabins are at 7-8;000 PA and we are asking our FA's to perform the duties of a required flight deck crew member while impaired by hypoxia. In my opinion they would not be fit for duty in this state. We also should be very concerned about the fact that some of these FA's could have either diagnosed or undiagnosed health conditions like asthma that could create a perfect storm of health issues causing an inflight medical emergency. So we have a perfect storm of restricted breathing; high cabin altitudes and possible underlying health conditions that may cause problems for them.Suggestion: Allow FAs to be able to remove the face mask during flight operations. Better yet remove the policy altogether.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.