Staphylococcus epidermidis is a safer surrogate of Staphylococcus aureus in testing bacterial filtration efficiency of face masks.

ABSTRACT: Face masks play a role in reducing the spread of airborne pathogens, providing that they have a good filtration performance, are correctly fitted and maintained. Bacterial Filtration Efficiency (BFE) is a key indicator for evaluating filtration performance according to both European and US standards, requiring the use of Staphylococcus aureus loaded aerosol. However, the generation and handling of a Biohazard group 2 bacterium aerosol require a careful management of the biological risk and pose limitations to the accessibility to this method. To mitigate these drawbacks, we investigated the use of S. epidermidis ATCC 12228, a Biohazard group 1 bacterium, as surrogate in BFE test. To this end, tests with the surrogate strain were performed to tune the method. Then, three face mask models, r

SUBMITTER: Chiera S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10710463 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature