Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing a reusable, N95 respirator-modeled silicone rubber face mask named iMASC, to eliminate health waste and to address a mask shortage in the midst of the pandemic.
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Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston developed the new masks, which come equipped with two disposable N95 filters that trap virus particles.
The iMASC (Molded Autoclavable, Scalable, Conformable Injection) comes with the greatest benefit of quick and effective sterilization. This can also be reused and requires only a limited quantity of N95 material to be produced.
“One of the key things we recognized early on was that in order to help meet the demand, we needed to really restrict ourselves to methods that could scale,” said Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“We also wanted to maximize the reusability of the system, and we wanted systems that could be sterilized in many different ways,” he added.
The limited supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) to the healthcare staff as they fought at the frontline has been a major concern across the world. Several healthcare workers were forced to use disposable masks, rendering them especially susceptible to contracting COVID-19 infection while many of them resorted to the sterilization and reuse of disposable masks to reduce the risk of infection.
The MIT team is now working on a second version of the iMASC, based on health workers’ feedback. The research team also aims to expand silicone-based mask production and will work to obtain Food and Drug Administration (FDA ) approval.
The N95 masks have been proven to be more effective against airborne viral particles-COVID-19 as they are made from polypropylene fibers, which filter these tiny particles out.
A standard N95 mask is intended to be worn for a single day, though stricter protocols demand that it be changed after a doctor sees a different patient. Many hospitals sterilize a used N95 mask using hydrogen peroxide vapor, allowing it to be used up to 20 times. Not many clinics however are fitted with this equipment for sterilization.
