The COVID-19 pandemic made the whole world change its lifestyle in several respects: working at home has become much more common and people have started to pay more attention to safety. Social distancing and the use of protective masks helped the population to contain the spread of the epidemic, proving to be an effective means of dealing with this type of problem. Enforcement has been entrusted to staff dedicated to this task, but it is a job easily replaced through the use of automation. The FMR-DB (Facial Masks and Respirators Database) was developed in order to provide a basis for the training of machine learning systems capable of performing this task not only in the context of disease containment but in all contexts in which the use of masks plays a key role in safety protection.