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Rapid design and implementation of a UVC decontamination room

With the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has swept the world and the nation, hospitals around the country have experienced shortages in Personal Protective Equipment, specifically N95 filter face-mask respirators (FFRs). This has created the need for facilities to develop sterilization processes to en...

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Autores principales: Hummel, Andrew, Ergai, Awatef, Spiva, LeeAnna, Toney, Sharlene, Crawford, Austin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8763863/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35039596
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-04926-4
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author Hummel, Andrew
Ergai, Awatef
Spiva, LeeAnna
Toney, Sharlene
Crawford, Austin
author_facet Hummel, Andrew
Ergai, Awatef
Spiva, LeeAnna
Toney, Sharlene
Crawford, Austin
author_sort Hummel, Andrew
collection PubMed
description With the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has swept the world and the nation, hospitals around the country have experienced shortages in Personal Protective Equipment, specifically N95 filter face-mask respirators (FFRs). This has created the need for facilities to develop sterilization processes to enable reuse of face masks by the health care personnel. Among the various methods of sterilization, UVC light exposure is the easiest to implement given the factors of time, safety, and availability. Face masks and/or other PPE are exposed to UVC light for a specified time to kill any viruses or bacteria that may reside on the surfaces of the masks. A collaborative effort was formed in April of 2020 between Wellstar Health System and Kennesaw State University to (1) setup an appropriate sterilization room at a Wellstar hospital (2) develop the procedural guidelines necessary to ensure quality control and (3) assess employees’ perceptions of the N95 FFR decontamination process and efficacy. This paper will first describe the methodology used to validate the layout of the room, which consists of a rudimentary analytical analysis of the UVC photon intensity from bulb-to-mask, computer simulations to determine the lighting power density throughout the room, and experimental measurements to confirm the appropriate energy deposition. This paper will then document the procedures for handling and processing the pre- and post-sterilized masks followed by employee survey findings. It is the hope of the authors that this paper will serve to provide a generic blueprint for hospitals and other organizations to follow if a future need arises for rapid UVC decontamination.
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spelling pubmed-87638632022-01-18 Rapid design and implementation of a UVC decontamination room Hummel, Andrew Ergai, Awatef Spiva, LeeAnna Toney, Sharlene Crawford, Austin Sci Rep Article With the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has swept the world and the nation, hospitals around the country have experienced shortages in Personal Protective Equipment, specifically N95 filter face-mask respirators (FFRs). This has created the need for facilities to develop sterilization processes to enable reuse of face masks by the health care personnel. Among the various methods of sterilization, UVC light exposure is the easiest to implement given the factors of time, safety, and availability. Face masks and/or other PPE are exposed to UVC light for a specified time to kill any viruses or bacteria that may reside on the surfaces of the masks. A collaborative effort was formed in April of 2020 between Wellstar Health System and Kennesaw State University to (1) setup an appropriate sterilization room at a Wellstar hospital (2) develop the procedural guidelines necessary to ensure quality control and (3) assess employees’ perceptions of the N95 FFR decontamination process and efficacy. This paper will first describe the methodology used to validate the layout of the room, which consists of a rudimentary analytical analysis of the UVC photon intensity from bulb-to-mask, computer simulations to determine the lighting power density throughout the room, and experimental measurements to confirm the appropriate energy deposition. This paper will then document the procedures for handling and processing the pre- and post-sterilized masks followed by employee survey findings. It is the hope of the authors that this paper will serve to provide a generic blueprint for hospitals and other organizations to follow if a future need arises for rapid UVC decontamination. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-01-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8763863/ /pubmed/35039596 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-04926-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Hummel, Andrew
Ergai, Awatef
Spiva, LeeAnna
Toney, Sharlene
Crawford, Austin
Rapid design and implementation of a UVC decontamination room
title Rapid design and implementation of a UVC decontamination room
title_full Rapid design and implementation of a UVC decontamination room
title_fullStr Rapid design and implementation of a UVC decontamination room
title_full_unstemmed Rapid design and implementation of a UVC decontamination room
title_short Rapid design and implementation of a UVC decontamination room
title_sort rapid design and implementation of a uvc decontamination room
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8763863/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35039596
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-04926-4
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