Coronavirus has caused a nationwide mask shortage. Now, an Ohio couple’s dinner conversation has sparked a solution.
Dr. Laurie Hommema arrived home for dinner Friday, March 13, with masks on her mind.
Now, just six weeks later, Battelle-built systems that can decontaminate a combined millions of masks per day are rolling out across the country. They’re free to use for medical providers under a $400 million federal contract. Ideally, recycling won’t be necessary for long, hospital leaders said, as production of new masks catches up to the demand and the price stabilizes.
Battelle’s study evaluated decontaminating N95 respirators using an existing hydrogen peroxide vapor machine called the Bioquell Clarus C. The researchers found it could disinfect an N95 mask up to 20 times without degrading the mask. The elastic head strap is the first part to break down with repeated hydrogen peroxide vapor cleaning.
They scoured every research lab in the university for masks and took in donations from the community. They still didn’t have enough. To clean masks instead, Kates built a frame in his home workshop that can hold dozens of masks at the proper angle to expose them to the light. They tested angles and light intensities to find a combination that can clean each mask as many as 20 times without distorting the fit.
Both VCU and OhioHealth have a persistent problem: makeup. If staff members wear makeup and it gets on their mask, that mask must be thrown away. Germs could persist under the stain, Kates said, so there’s no way to guarantee that the mask is decontaminated. But now that these systems have been proven to work, experts said, they can be quickly deployed in the event of a future mask shortage.
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