A study on barrier performance of medical face masks

Abstract

The sudden outbreak and rapid transmission of SARS-Covid-19 virus has urged people around the world to adopt safety measures to help stop the spread of this infectious disease. Thus, there comes a sudden increase in demand for PPEs such as face masks and gowns. This increase in demand has paved the way for low-quality medical face masks to the public, causing a serious threat to the contamination of the Covid-19 virus. Therefore, to verify the real picture of the performance quality of medical face masks, we carried out a study to check their barrier performance as per the requirements of International Standards EN 14683 and ASTM F2100. We conducted the bacterial filtration efficiency, particle filtration efficiency and differential pressure tests on all the medical face masks samples and found that almost all the masks fall under 95% filtration to bacterial aerosol requirement, 95% filtration efficiency to latex sphere, and had differential pressure in limits. Our study has also concluded a correlation between these performance criteria, and it would be a great help and time saving if we adopted the findings of this research. The out has helped to create public confidence in their quality performance.