Applying heat and humidity using stove boiled water for decontamination of N95 respirators in low resource settings.

ABSTRACT: Global shortages of N95 respirators have led to an urgent need of N95 decontamination and reuse methods that are scientifically validated and available world-wide. Although several large scale decontamination methods have been proposed (hydrogen peroxide vapor, UV-C); many of them are not applicable in remote and low-resource settings. Heat with humidity has been demonstrated as a promising decontamination approach, but care must be taken when implementing this method at a grassroots level. Here we present a simple, scalable method to provide controlled humidity and temperature for individual N95 respirators which is easily applicable in low-resource settings. N95 respirators were subjected to moist heat (>50% relative humidity, 65-80°C temperature) for over 30 minutes by placing them in a

SUBMITTER: Doshi S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8483377 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature