Open AccessThe properties of hot household hygroscopic materials and their potential use for non-medical facemask decontamination
Author(s) -
MarieLine Andréola,
Frédéric Becquart,
Wahbi Jomaa,
Paul Verhoeven,
Gérard Baldacchino,
Simon Hemour
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0255148
Subject(s) - human decontamination , reuse , population , economic shortage , covid-19 , transmission (telecommunications) , computer science , risk analysis (engineering) , environmental science , waste management , medicine , environmental health , engineering , telecommunications , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , linguistics , philosophy , government (linguistics)
The widespread use of facemasks throughout the population is recommended by the WHO to reduce transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As some regions of the world are facing mask shortages, reuse may be necessary. However, used masks are considered as a potential hazard that may spread and transmit disease if they are not decontaminated correctly and systematically before reuse. As a result, the inappropriate decontamination practices that are commonly witnessed in the general public are challenging management of the epidemic at a large scale. To achieve public acceptance and implementation, decontamination procedures need to be low-cost and simple. We propose the use of hot hygroscopic materials to decontaminate non-medical facemasks in household settings. We report on the inactivation of a viral load on a facial mask exposed to hot hygroscopic materials for 15 minutes. As opposed to recent academic studies whereby decontamination is achieved by maintaining heat and humidity above a given value, a more flexible procedure is proposed here using a slow decaying pattern, which is both effective and easier to implement, suggesting straightforward public deployment and hence reliable implementation by the population.