Aerosolized Hydrogen Peroxide Decontamination of N95 Respirators, with Fit-Testing and Virologic Confirmation of Suitability for Re-Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic

T. Hans Derr; Melissa A. James; Chad V. Kuny; Prem P. Kandel; Matthew D. Beckman; Kevin L. Hockett; Mark A. Bates; Moriah L Szpara

Sequential fit-testing focused on a large number (>70) of the 3M 8511 model respirators. These were fit-tested after the first, fifth, and tenth cycles of decontamination, with one final round of fit-testing still to be completed after the fifteenth cycle. All respirators fit-tested were subjected to QLFT. In order to continually monitor QLFT test outcomes on the same facepieces over the course of sequential cycles of decontamination, only two of these were consumed by QNFT per model during each round of fit-testing. Respirators were split between the male and female subjects. Successful QLFT and QNFT were achieved on all respirators at each round tested thus far, for both the male and female subject. One respirator facepiece experienced a broken elastic strap after ten cycles of aHP, and thus failed fit-testing. No other failures have occurred. QLFT and QNFT was also conducted on a smaller number of additional respirator models (as indicated in Table 1 , # included in study). For these respirator models, a maximum of 12 facepieces were . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.