AUTHOREA
Log in
Sign Up
Browse Preprints
LOG IN
SIGN UP
Łukasz Werner
Public Documents
1
Effect of electron beam irradiation on filtering facepiece respirators integrity and...
Dagmara Chmielewska-Śmietanko
and 3 more
July 25, 2020
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.