The ultimate guide to reusing and buying N95 masks
Everything you need to know—well, at least until the next game-changing variant.
PUBLISHED JAN 9, 2022 9:00 AM
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How many times can I reuse an N95? Officially, N95 respirators are designed for one use only—that means changing them every two to three hours of continuous use. And if you have to regularly interact with someone who’s infected with COVID-19, experts recommend you change your mask every time you come into contact with them.
As you can imagine, that results in a lot of waste. Schabacker agrees with people’s concerns, but he also notes that getting sick and potentially ending up in a hospital also has environmental consequences.
“If you get sick, the amount of waste you create is exponentially larger—I mean, it’s logarithmic in terms of single-use products,” he explains. Instead of just you using and discarding a mask, everyone who takes care of you is wearing and trashing masks, gloves, and more.
But it’s not only a pollution problem—it’s also a financial one. At a price that generally fluctuates between 80 cents and $1 per mask, donning and doffing multiple N95s a day is a blow many budgets just cannot take. Prices have lowered back to pre-pandemic levels, Warren says, but these respirators continue to be considerably more expensive than surgical masks.
Still, there technically is a way you can safely reuse N95s, even if it’s not ideal: rotating them. This is a method Peter Tsai, the inventor of the material used to make these masks, suggested in a study back in May 2020, when the PPE shortage meant treating patients was increasingly dangerous for healthcare workers.
In the study, Tsai explains people need four masks in rotation—one of them should be in use while each remaining mask undergoes decontamination in its own paper bag, at room temperature, for three days. If you want to be extra careful, you can increase the number of masks in rotation and, say, have one for each day of the week. For this method to work, it’s crucial to identify each mask—you can use a number or color system—to avoid errors, and use a clean paper bag every time you start the decontamination phase.
Three days is enough time for any traces of the virus on the mask to die out, the study says. In a four-mask rotation, this means there’s a COVID-free mask ready to use every 24 hours. But that doesn’t mean the mask is clean. There are countless pathogens living in our mouths and airways—not to mention bits of decomposing food—and these also get stuck in our masks every time we breathe out, eat, or talk.
“You don’t clean your underwear by hanging them on the clothesline for a week and airing it out,” Warren says.
If you’re not bothered by weeks-old bacteria living in your mask or think this is a small price to pay to keep plastic out of the landfill, rotating your N95s is a reasonably safe way to protect yourself and others against COVID-19.
More: popsci.com |
