Warren R Myers, Weihua Yang, Kenneth J Ryan, Mike Bergman, Edward Fisher, Jhy-Charm Soo, Ziqing Zhuang
Both respirators and surgical masks (SM) are used as source control devices. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was much interest in understanding the extent of particle total outward leakage (TOL) from these devices. The objective of this study was to quantify the TOL for five categories of devices: SMs, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH®) Approved N95® filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) without exhalation valves, NIOSH Approved N95 FFRs with exhalation valves (N95 FFRV), NIOSH Approved elastomeric half-mask respirators (EHMRs) with exhalation valves, and NIOSH Approved EHMRs with an SM covering the exhalation valve (EHMRSM)...
September 8, 2023: Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene