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Particle Size-Selective Assessment of Protection of European Standard FFP Respirators and Surgical Masks against Particles-Tested with Human Subjects

This study was conducted to investigate the protection of disposable filtering half-facepiece respirators of different grades against particles between 0.093 and 1.61 μm. A personal sampling system was used to particle size-selectively assess the protection of respirators. The results show that abou...

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Autores principales: Lee, Shu-An, Hwang, Dong-Chir, Li, He-Yi, Tsai, Chieh-Fu, Chen, Chun-Wan, Chen, Jen-Kun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27195721
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/8572493
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author Lee, Shu-An
Hwang, Dong-Chir
Li, He-Yi
Tsai, Chieh-Fu
Chen, Chun-Wan
Chen, Jen-Kun
author_facet Lee, Shu-An
Hwang, Dong-Chir
Li, He-Yi
Tsai, Chieh-Fu
Chen, Chun-Wan
Chen, Jen-Kun
author_sort Lee, Shu-An
collection PubMed
description This study was conducted to investigate the protection of disposable filtering half-facepiece respirators of different grades against particles between 0.093 and 1.61 μm. A personal sampling system was used to particle size-selectively assess the protection of respirators. The results show that about 10.9% of FFP2 respirators and 28.2% of FFP3 respirators demonstrate assigned protection factors (APFs) below 10 and 20, which are the levels assigned for these respirators by the British Standard. On average, the protection factors of FFP respirators were 11.5 to 15.9 times greater than those of surgical masks. The minimum protection factors (PFs) were observed for particles between 0.263 and 0.384 μm. No significant difference in PF results was found among FFP respirator categories and particle size. A strong association between fit factors and protection factors was found. The study indicates that FFP respirators may not achieve the expected protection level and the APFs may need to be revised for these classes of respirators.
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spelling pubmed-50585712016-11-15 Particle Size-Selective Assessment of Protection of European Standard FFP Respirators and Surgical Masks against Particles-Tested with Human Subjects Lee, Shu-An Hwang, Dong-Chir Li, He-Yi Tsai, Chieh-Fu Chen, Chun-Wan Chen, Jen-Kun J Healthc Eng Research Article This study was conducted to investigate the protection of disposable filtering half-facepiece respirators of different grades against particles between 0.093 and 1.61 μm. A personal sampling system was used to particle size-selectively assess the protection of respirators. The results show that about 10.9% of FFP2 respirators and 28.2% of FFP3 respirators demonstrate assigned protection factors (APFs) below 10 and 20, which are the levels assigned for these respirators by the British Standard. On average, the protection factors of FFP respirators were 11.5 to 15.9 times greater than those of surgical masks. The minimum protection factors (PFs) were observed for particles between 0.263 and 0.384 μm. No significant difference in PF results was found among FFP respirator categories and particle size. A strong association between fit factors and protection factors was found. The study indicates that FFP respirators may not achieve the expected protection level and the APFs may need to be revised for these classes of respirators. Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2016 2016-03-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5058571/ /pubmed/27195721 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/8572493 Text en Copyright © 2016 Shu-An Lee et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lee, Shu-An
Hwang, Dong-Chir
Li, He-Yi
Tsai, Chieh-Fu
Chen, Chun-Wan
Chen, Jen-Kun
Particle Size-Selective Assessment of Protection of European Standard FFP Respirators and Surgical Masks against Particles-Tested with Human Subjects
title Particle Size-Selective Assessment of Protection of European Standard FFP Respirators and Surgical Masks against Particles-Tested with Human Subjects
title_full Particle Size-Selective Assessment of Protection of European Standard FFP Respirators and Surgical Masks against Particles-Tested with Human Subjects
title_fullStr Particle Size-Selective Assessment of Protection of European Standard FFP Respirators and Surgical Masks against Particles-Tested with Human Subjects
title_full_unstemmed Particle Size-Selective Assessment of Protection of European Standard FFP Respirators and Surgical Masks against Particles-Tested with Human Subjects
title_short Particle Size-Selective Assessment of Protection of European Standard FFP Respirators and Surgical Masks against Particles-Tested with Human Subjects
title_sort particle size-selective assessment of protection of european standard ffp respirators and surgical masks against particles-tested with human subjects
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27195721
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/8572493
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