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Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

news.illinois.edu

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Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#111

Post by otterley »

sherbondy wrote: post #97
foobiekr wrote: post #57

Related: can anyone explain why there are still no n95 masks available? It seems like, a few months in, it's surprising that there are none available for non-medical buyers. Is this perception wrong?

My wife has been selling NIOSH-approved KN95 [1] masks to folks in the US for the past few months. First she tried to supply them directly to hospitals but ran into a harrowing amount of red tape. Then she listed them on eBay but got banned for “price gouging” despite listing at a lower rate than many of the approved sellers. Now she’s just selling the remaining inventory directly, and completely deterred from trying…

Are they really NIOSH approved? NIOSH doesn’t approve KN95 masks[1]. Also, I thought elastic straps have to go around the head instead of the ears to obtain approval.

Can we see the approval certificate?

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/usernotices/counterfeitResp....

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#112

Post by noelsusman »

rladd wrote: post #107
noelsusman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not widely available to non-medical buyers because they're still not easily attainable for medical buyers. N95s aren't the easiest thing to manufacturer, so ramping up production to fully satisfy current demand would require a significant investment in time and capital. Companies aren't going to do that without some certainty that they'll actually be able to sell enough of their extra production to cover the…

Are you guys disinfecting? If so, which method are you using? If not, why not?

We are. I want to say we're using UV but I'm not 100% on that.

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#113

Post by noelsusman »

pushswap wrote: post #87
noelsusman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not widely available to non-medical buyers because they're still not easily attainable for medical buyers. N95s aren't the easiest thing to manufacturer, so ramping up production to fully satisfy current demand would require a significant investment in time and capital. Companies aren't going to do that without some certainty that they'll actually be able to sell enough of their extra production to cover the…

My company tried donating 120 boxes of 3M N95 masks to our major local hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic. We only asked that the expense would not be charged to patients directly or indirectly. None of the hospitals accepted the masks based on the no indirect billing part.

I'm not sure what no indirect billing would even mean. Would they have to track exactly where those 120 boxes were used and subtract some theoretical portion of their bill that would be attributable to the mask expense? No hospital I've worked at would be set up to accomplish that, and 120 boxes isn't nearly enough to warrant trying to set that up. That's barely a day's supply.

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#114

Post by jaclaz »

I don't want to appear a naysayer, but everyone should be aware that N95 masks usually aren't effective at the intended level because of the lack of a fit test and training by the non-professional users.

See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23957506

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#115

Post by radus »

distances wrote: post #106
everybodyknows wrote: post #33

SARS Cov-2 infectiousness decays exponentially, with the time constant a function of temperature and humidity. A two-parameter calculator: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/sars-calculator

Would it be wrong to infer from this that letting a face mask sit in room temperature for a week is almost guaranteed to make it safe for use again?

Not wrong at all. I do 3 days in paper bags. Reasoning for paper is that it breathes more than plastic and the half life of the virus is shorter on paper as well.

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#116

Post by radus »

mariushn wrote: post #101
Xcelerate wrote: post #95

I have a set of N99 masks that I just rotate over a period of about a week in brown paper bags. If you don’t have enough masks for that, I imagine a sous vide machine (like the Joule) would work. Just seal the mask in a plastic bag and place under water for the appropriate amount of time. These things hold very precise temperatures.

> I just rotate over a period of about a week in brown paper bags. Why the brown paper bags? Do these ensure better evaporation? Wouldn't simply keeping the mask somewhere kill the virus in 3-4 days? Or, what would be the best way to ensure this within 3-4 days without any damage to the mask?

Paper bags are cheap, provide adequate containment, allow moisture to evaporate, and the virus is stable on paper for less time than on plastic.

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#117

Post by pushswap »

quicklime wrote: post #103
pushswap wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company tried donating 120 boxes of 3M N95 masks to our major local hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic. We only asked that the expense would not be charged to patients directly or indirectly. None of the hospitals accepted the masks based on the no indirect billing part.

I can see why they would refuse to do this. The effort of tracking which masks were donated vs which to charge for, would be significant. Who’s going to track which patient was treated by staff wearing donated masks, and which were not? And if medical staff were working with multiple patients while wearing the same mask, would they have to split the discount for a $1 mask up between patients?

We just wanted our donation to be a donation to patients and staff, not to the business side bottomline. Since n95 masks are practically fungible, it could have easily been credited or treated as a donation to patient bills (as we suggested) whether it be to divide among X random Covid patients or to a single person's ICU bill. The masks value was around $25,000, and who knows what multiple (3-25x ?) the hospital would charge to patients?

The fact is the hospitals gave us no path toward transferring that to patients and not their bottom line. We ended up selling most of our masks to hospitals for that reason, seeing it as the more moral option.

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#118

Post by im3w1l »

solinent wrote: post #80
rayuela wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow this is actually incredible if this works. However this study was tested bacteria and relate it to covid in the following way: "an ozone application achieves a high level of disinfection against PsA, a vegetative bacteria that the CDC identifies as more difficult to kill than medium sized viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19)" Would the implication be that this same method works on covid as well? That is not imme…

It sounds like it's saying "ozone kills the tougher bacteria than Covid at a very high rate". So directly it says absolutely nothing about Covid but implicitly it does seem to state that it should also kill Covid since it's less tough to kill than the vegetative bacteria. I guess they can't make that statement directly--there's no evidence related to Covid here. I'd ignore it.

But why are they making this proxy argument, why not test with covid directly? Makes me think they did test with covid and it wasn't working.

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#119

Post by solinent »

im3w1l wrote: post #118
solinent wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like it's saying "ozone kills the tougher bacteria than Covid at a very high rate". So directly it says absolutely nothing about Covid but implicitly it does seem to state that it should also kill Covid since it's less tough to kill than the vegetative bacteria. I guess they can't make that statement directly--there's no evidence related to Covid here. I'd ignore it.

But why are they making this proxy argument, why not test with covid directly? Makes me think they did test with covid and it wasn't working.

Maybe the mechanism of death is similar so if it kills a more difficult strain the same mechanism will kill the "easier strain". It doesn't directly state it though, I think it's just speculation. It doesn't belong in a science paper except maybe in a speculative section about the future I guess.

Re: Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

#120

Post by Xcelerate »

radus wrote: post #116
mariushn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just rotate over a period of about a week in brown paper bags. Why the brown paper bags? Do these ensure better evaporation? Wouldn't simply keeping the mask somewhere kill the virus in 3-4 days? Or, what would be the best way to ensure this within 3-4 days without any damage to the mask?

Paper bags are cheap, provide adequate containment, allow moisture to evaporate, and the virus is stable on paper for less time than on plastic.

Mainly this. And I can write the date of last use on the outside of the bag.
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