Cities are cautiously starting to reopen around the world, but social distancing and mask-wearing are likely here to stay — at least until a COVID-19 vaccine can be developed and mass produced.
With protective gear still in high demand, buying disposable face masks can be difficult, expensive, and can exacerbate shortages for medical personnel. The researchers from Columbia University said that disinfecting certain kinds of N95 respirators and surgical masks by baking them at 170 degrees F did not affect most masks’ ability to filter out virus-sized particles, even over 10 cycles of disinfection in the oven.
The FDA announced that not all N95 masks can or should be disinfected and reused. You can check the details here.
It’s important to follow a few key steps in order to disinfect your mask without damaging it and putting yourself at risk.
Step 1: Preheat your oven to 170 degrees F. You may think that hotter is better — Not really Hotter temperatures could melt plastic within your mask and make it less protective. Stick with 170 degrees.
Step 2: Using clean hands, place your mask into a brown paper bag. Always handle your mask by the straps only.
Step 3: Rewash your hands. Remember to lather for at least 20 seconds.
Step 4: Fold over the top of the bag. Fold it over three times. If you’re disinfecting masks from multiple people simultaneously, use a different bag for each mask, and write each person’s name on their bag. This is to ensure that the mask maintains the proper fit for each person and reduces wear and tear.
Step 5: Place the brown paper bag with mask into an oven bag or pressure cooker. Any tightly sealing, oven-safe container will work. You can put multiple brown bags into the same container.
Step 6: Place sealed bag or pressure cooker into oven for 45 minutes. Make sure the oven has finished preheating before you put it in. And set a timer — overcooking your mask could ruin it. After 45 minutes, remove and let cool. Now your mask is disinfected.
Step 7: Inspect for damages. If there are no holes or tears, your mask is now safe to reuse. Before wearing your mask, look for tears or holes, and give the straps a gentle stretch to make sure they’re still strong. Discard any mask with defects.
For some people, these 7 step maybe take a few minutes, is there any more efficiency method to disinfect the mask? Yes, you can use the Sterilization Box. It can kill 99.9% bacteria and viruses in 15 minutes. It can quickly refurbish and disinfect used masks
UV with a wavelength of 250-275 nanometers can quickly penetrate the cell membrane of bacteria, destroy the DNA gene chain or RNA in the bacteria cells, and cause the growth cell death or regenerative cell death, thus achieving the complete sterilization effect
Ultraviolet mask disinfection box is also very easy to use, just put the mask into the disinfection box, and then a key to open disinfection, the disinfection box will automatically close after 15 minutes.
The Opening uv disinfection is easy to burn the eye skin when using. While this kind of ultraviolet ray sterilizes box applies enclosed design, the light would turn off automatically when the cover opens, avoided ultraviolet ray to the human body.
In addition to disinfecting masks and mobile phones, this box can also disinfect small items such as glasses, jewelry, keys, watches and purses, killing viruses and bacteria that cling to surfaces and reducing the risk of contact infection
It is small and portable, which can be easily put into a travel bag. It is plugged in, does not contain battery, and can pass security check. Whether you’re in the office or at home, you can always disinfect masks and other items