Is the fit of N95 facial masks effected by disinfection? A study of heat and UV disinfection methods using the OSHA protocol fit test

  1. Amy Price
  2. Yi Cui
  3. Lei Liao
  4. Wang Xiao
  5. Xuanze Yu
  6. Haotian Wang
  7. Mervin Zhao
  8. Qiqi Wang
  9. Steven Chu
  10. Larry Chu

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Abstract

The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted global supply chain shortcomings in the US hospital delivery system, most notably personal protective equipment (PPE) and COVID-19 is found on these masks ∼7 days. Recent work from our group has shown two promising disinfection methods for N95 facial masks, dry heat (hot air (75 °C, 30 min) and UVGI which is UVGI 254 nm, 8W, 30 min. Using N95 five models of N95 masks from three different manufacturers we determined the following: 1) Hot air treated N95 masks applied over 5 cycles did not degrade the fit of masks (1.5% change in fit factor, p = .67), 2) UVGI treated N95 masks applied over 10 cycles were significantly degraded in fit and did not pass quantitative fit testing using OSHA testing protocols on a human model (−77.4% change in fit factor, p = .0002).

NOTE

We would like to share our results with the community as soon as possible. Be mindful that this report is a pilot study and a work in progress. We will have more results in the coming days and weeks .

We recommend that hospital policy and procedures be respected and adhered to. Do not use anything in your home to disinfect contaminated equipment. Please do not heat your masks in a home oven!

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.14.20062810: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.14.20062810v1 on medRxiv