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Showing posts from October, 2020

Should You Be Reusing N95 Masks?

The latest Coronavirus epidemic has contributed to a great deal of change in the way people live their everyday lives and communicate with medical professionals. The scarcity of N95 respirators has existed before, but not on this magnitude. The CDC does not suggest that the general population use N95 respirators as a defense against COVID-19 or other respiratory diseases: the only way to reduce infection is to minimize contact, and respirators are important to health workers that require an additional defense. Sadly, several workers are using theirs again on the basis that any protection is better than no protection. Is that the easiest and most successful way to proceed, though? These masks were intended to be discarded after use, so it's important to ask in the face of an outbreak of disease: are N95 masks reusable? FDA Respirator Mask Recommendations The US Food and Drug Administration advises that N95 Respirators and Disposable Masks should not be shared or reused. Both cli...