Dry Heat as a Decontamination Method for N95 Face Respirator Reuse

14 May 2020, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

A pandemic such as COVID-19 can cause a depletion of face respirators throughout the world, forcing temporal respirator reuse. In this research, dry heat was systematically evaluated by decontamination, filtration performance, and qualitative fit testing to help safe reuse of N95 (1860, 3M) respirators. As a result, the dry heat generated by a cooker (120°C, 50 min) was effective in inactivating >4.7 log viruses without deteriorating its intended functions. Therefore, we suggest the dry heat generated by a pressure cooker (such as rice cookers and instant pots) as a reliable and accessible decontamination method for the N95 face respirator reuse.

Keywords

N95 face respirator
decontamination sensitivity
Dry heat
Virus
Pressure cooker

Supplementary materials

Title
Description
Actions
Title
Oh et al SI
Description
Actions

Comments

Comments are not moderated before they are posted, but they can be removed by the site moderators if they are found to be in contravention of our Commenting Policy [opens in a new tab] - please read this policy before you post. Comments should be used for scholarly discussion of the content in question. You can find more information about how to use the commenting feature here [opens in a new tab] .
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy [opens in a new tab] and Terms of Service [opens in a new tab] apply.