Dry Heat as a Decontamination Method for N95 Face Respirator Reuse

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.