Friday, April 10, 2020

Clean your N-95 mask in the microwave

There's a Stanford website that describes ways to process N-95 masks in your microwave for reuse. 

Here is the website:

Here's the CDC guidance on how to clean them for reuse:
"Steam treatment may be a suitable approach for decontaminating FFRs. The limited number of studies for steam report minimal effect on FFR filtration and fit performance and a minimum 99.9% reduction in H1N1 and bacteriophage MS2 [14, 15]. Fisher et al. used microwave steam bags, designed for disinfecting infant feeding equipment, to decontaminate six FFR models and achieved 99.9% inactivation of MS2 bacteriophage. Filtration performance of all tested FFRs scored above NIOSH certification requirements. Three FFRs were further evaluated for three cycles of steam exposure and demonstrated no change in filtration performance [15]. Bergman et al. also demonstrated acceptable filtration performance after three cycles of exposure to microwave generated steam [3]. Microwave generated steam had little effect on FFR fit after exposure to up to three cycles of steam [9, 10]. Using microwaves to produce steam to decontaminate FFRs is not without limitations. Not all microwaves are constructed the same and some are more powerful than others. The effect of higher power microwaves on FFRs is unknown. Furthermore, the metal nosebands of FFRs may cause arcing, sparks inside the microwave oven, during exposure to microwaves."

Here are  the microwave steam bags described on the Stanford website for cleaning N-95 masks.

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