Type de document

Études primaires

Année de publication

2020

Langue

Anglais

Titre de la revue

Journal of the International Society for Respiratory Protection

Première page

94

Dernière page

107

Résumé

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressure on health centers to obtain certified N95 filtering facepiece respirators (N95 FFRs) and the pressure on the FFRs production sector led to a diversification of FFRs’ supply chains, with the approval of several government authorities.

Objective: The main issue then becomes whether these purchased FFRs are as effective as the FFRs commonly used in the pre-COVID-19 period.

Methods: The most efficient way is to test these FFRs under normative conditions. The setup used here allows to measure the pressure drop Δp (mbar) and the filtration efficiency E (%) of FFRs with a constant 85 Liter per minute. However, it would be useful to find visible markers that could indicate a possible defect (intentional or not) or a possible counterfeit.

Results and conclusions: The performance measurements and visual inspections of 43 types of FFRs are compared and analyzed in this paper. 35% of the FFRs received in the laboratory have a minimum filtration efficiency greater than 95%, and 28% have a minimum efficiency less than 80%. The results show that marks on FFRs are not a clear and precise indicator of the efficiency of the FFR. However, a visual inspection and a preliminary fit test can identify some ineffective FFRs.

Mots-clés

Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, Masque N95, N95 mask, Appareil respiratoire filtrant, Air purifying respirator, Efficacité de filtration, Filtration efficiency, Détermination expérimentale, Experimental determination, Essai du matériel, Equipment testing

Numéro de projet IRSST

n/a

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