Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new face mask that might be as effective as the N95.
The new mask — called the Injection Molded Autoclavable, Scalable, Conformable (or iMASC) — is a reusable mask that could help health care workers avoid short supply of protective equipment.
“One of the key things we recognized early on was that in order to help meet the demand, we needed to really restrict ourselves to methods that could scale,” says Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We also wanted to maximize the reusability of the system, and we wanted systems that could be sterilized in many different ways.”
The prototype worked like an N95 respirator at filtering out virus particles, CNBC reports.
The new mask uses silicone with two slots for disposable disks, which work as the filters.
CNBC said: “That means the masks themselves can be quickly and easily sterilized and reused, and though the small filters must be thrown out, each mask requires much less N95 material.”
Researchers used a steam sterilizer to help clean the mask. They also put the mask in an oven and soaked it in bleach to clean it.
One group of health care workers tested the mask and “said that the mask fit well and felt breathable,” according to CNBC.
Recently, health experts have raised concern over people wearing specific N95 masks that have the breathing valve because it can release coronavirus droplets into the air, as I wrote for Deseret.com.
These masks have vents that “allow unfiltered exhaled air to escape. That defeats the point of wearing a mask,” according to The Los Angeles Times, which said the mask can help spread the coronavirus. “That defeats the point of wearing a mask for the coronavirus, which is to keep potentially infectious oral droplets from spraying outward to other people.”