Though this is not a sufficient test to establish conformity with NIOSH,
EN149 or GB2626 standards, we have shown that results using this set-up conforms
well to NIOSH pre-approval results (see in the Supplementary materials).
We have collected data on a set of N95 masks (n = 10) exposed to various sterilization
procedures using the equipment described here and a test to NIOSH standards at a
commercial laboratory (ICS Laboratories, USA) equipped to perform pre-certification testing.
Mask instantaneous filtration efficiency values measured using the two tests had a correlation
coefficient of 0.89 and all masks that passed our testing also passed ICS tests.
Nonetheless, the data described here results should be interpreted as a relative,
not absolute, measures of filtration efficiency.
ICS Instantaneous Test | Our setup for 0.3μm particles | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Model | Cycles | Filter Efficiency(%) | Model | Cycles | Filter Efficiency(%) |
3M 1860 | 1 | 99.33 | 3M 1860 | 1 | 99.2 |
2 | 99.47 | 2 | 99.2 | ||
5 | 99.36 | 5 | 98.76 | ||
KC/Halyard 46767(duckbill) | 1 | 99.89 | KC/Halyard 46767(duckbill) | 1 | 99.83 |
2 | 99.78 | 2 | 99.91 | ||
5 | 99.89 | 5 | 99.89 | ||
Gerson 21 | 1 | 98.69 | Gerson 21 | 1 | 96.06 |
2 | 97.43 | 2 | 96.46 | ||
3M 8210 | 1 | 99.76 | 3M 8210 | 1 | 99.86 |
2 | 99.82 | 2 | 99.52 |
All of the information above can be found in this paper.