The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign study found that 50 minutes of dry heat in an electric cooker decontaminated N95 respirators inside and out while maintaining their filtration and fit, the Indian Express reported. The researchers, including one of Indian origin, have found that.
This could enable wearers to safely reuse limited supplies of the respirators, which generally considered to be one-time-use items.
According to the findings published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, masks are a one-time-use thing, however, in the current situation, it is not possible to use it once. In that case, it is very important to disinfect the mask after using it once and before using it a second time.
“A cloth mask or surgical mask protects others from droplets the wearer might expel, but a respirator mask protects the wearer by filtering out smaller particles that might carry the virus,” said Thanh Nguyen, professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the US.
“There are many different ways to sterilise something, but most of them will destroy the filtration or the fit of an N95 respirator,” said Professor Vishal Verma from the University of Illinois.
“Any sanitation method would need to decontaminate all surfaces of the respirator, but equally important is maintaining the filtration efficacy and the fit of the respirator to the face of the wearer. Otherwise, it will not offer the right protection,” Verma said.
They verified that one cooking cycle, which maintains the contents of the cooker at around 100 degrees Celsius for 50 minutes, decontaminated the masks, inside and out, from four different classes of virus, including a coronavirus and did so more effectively than ultraviolet light Source: https://www.daily-bangladesh.com/
