Effect of electron beam irradiation on filtering facepiece respirators
integrity and filtering efficiency
- Dagmara Chmielewska-Śmietanko,
- Łukasz Werner,
- Urszula Gryczka,
- Wojciech Migdał
Urszula Gryczka
Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology
Author ProfileWojciech Migdał
Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology
Author ProfileAbstract
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has showed that the need for
medical masks and respirators exceeds the current global stockpile of
these item and production capacity. Taking into account that ionizing
radiation has been used for sterilization of medical products for many
years and electron beam irradiation enables the treatment of huge
quantities of disposable medical products in a short time this method
should be tested for the masks decontamination. In this work two
different filtering facepiece respirators were irradiated with electron
beam of different doses. Presented results confirmed that the decrease
in filtration efficiency after irradiation of both respirators results
from elimination of the electric charge from the PP fibers in the
irradiation process. Nevertheless, applied doses did not influence
filtering materials structure and integrity, therefore application of
treated in this way masks can be considered after restoration of
electric charge what is crucial for their filtering function.