The carbon footprint of Bubble-PAPR™: A novel item of personal protective equipment.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Personal protective equipment has important environmental impacts, assessing these impacts is therefore an important element of personal protective equipment design. We applied carbon footprinting methodology to Bubble-PAPR^™, a novel, part-reusable and part-recyclable powered air-purifying respirator, designed at our institution. Current guidance states that disposable respirator masks can be worn for 1-h in the United Kingdom, whilst the Bubble-PAPR^™ allows prolonged use.

Methods

Following a detailed use-case analysis, the carbon footprint of each component was estimated using a bottom-up (attributional) cradle-to-grave process-based analysis. Modelling considered the use of virgin or closed loop recycled polyvinyl chloride for the disposabl

SUBMITTER: Pinder A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11421240 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature