The National Institutes of Standards and Technology offers a new tool that would allow hospitals to identify rooms suitable for N95 mask disinfecting activities.
NIST said Thursday its new tool provides an estimation of how much vaporized hydrogen peroxide would be absorbed by masks in certain rooms.
Hospitals use VHP as a disinfectant to purify N95 masks in repurposed medical rooms. This approach was originally used to disinfect isolation rooms after a patient’s exit.
“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 who developed the new tool.
Choosing the wrong room may lead to VHP ending up on walls or other parts of the room instead of the masks.
The tool uses data on a room’s size, ventilation and material content to help hospitals determine the percentage of VHP that would effectively disinfect the masks.
