Credit: Courtesy of Battelle
N95 masks are gathered in a compartment for VHP decontamination.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals across the United States are disinfecting N95 masks by placing them in repurposed rooms or shipping containers injected with a disinfectant known as vaporized hydrogen peroxide, or VHP. A new tool from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can help hospitals and medical professionals determine which rooms should be used to disinfect N95 masks. The tool estimates the amount of VHP masks would receive and suggests that larger rooms containing fewer objects, with less-reactive surfaces and slower ventilation, maintain VHP concentration the best.
“Hospitals have used VHP systems to disinfect isolation rooms after a highly infectious person has left,” said Andrew Persily, chief of NIST’s Energy and Environment Division. “Now there are efforts underway to do the same to disinfect masks.”
For hospitals, choosing and configuring rooms to house the N95 disinfection processes means accounting for conditions that vary from room to room, such as size, airflow and surface materials. These factors influence VHP concentration and, in certain cases, could prevent masks from receiving effective doses.
“Even if you’re hitting a room with a huge dose of VHP and you're assuming it's all going on your masks, a lot of it may be going on your walls or ceiling,” said Dustin Poppendieck, a NIST environmental engineer and the developer of the new tool. “Then you might not be disinfecting as effectively as you think.”
VHP’s interactions with various materials came into focus for Poppendieck in the early 2000s, before ..
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