Filtration efficiency and breathability testing for permeability mask and filter technologies

加拿大对新冠肺炎危机的看法揭示了我国面临的重要供应链和环境影响挑战。迫切需要确保足够的个人防护装备(PPE)，以保护医疗保健提供者，并通过在大流行期间支持疾病预防实践来保护公众。我们还必须找到办法处理数百万、甚至数十亿个废弃的一次性口罩的紧急处置问题。加拿大政府在最近一次呼吁使用可堆肥的一次性医用口罩和呼吸器时认识到了这些问题的严重性。 UBC的BioProducts研究所汇聚了多学科生物材料研究领域备受尊敬的国际领导者，以应对我们这个时代最重要的环境挑战之一。2020年春，我们的团队注意到公共场所潜在危险的一次性口罩的堆积，并开始通过设计N95和平折医用口罩来应对个人防护设备的废物和供应挑战，这些口罩可以完全使用可再生的加拿大木纤维来源，如木纤维和木质素。随后在原型方面的成功表明了巨大的希望和现实的解决方案，为我国生产足够的个人防护装备，可以在加拿大制造。最重要的是，这种解决方案具有成本效益，可以减少塑料垃圾，并通过使用这些新的可堆肥口罩来减少对环境的影响。 为了创建这些环保的解决方案，重要的是能够：1)准确和可重复性地测量过滤效果，并根据公认的国家和国际标准对材料进行基准测试；2)能够快速处理用于测量的口罩样品，以比较不同过滤介质和成分的有效性和适用性；3)为总部提供重要的培训机会和技能经验，为他们未来的职业科学家提供支持。我们的团队已经获得了支持该项目的研究资金，并完成了大部分初步材料工作，但阻止我们进一步开发完全基于生物的口罩的关键因素是获得必要的过滤指标的能力。本建议书中要求的Palas呼吸口罩双极放电系统测试仪和Mas-Q-Check防护口罩测试仪将使我们能够加快努力，部署经过验证的性能和适当认证的口罩。它还将使我们能够改进和扩展当前的原型，以设计出适用于加拿大应用的最有效的个人防护设备。

The Canadian perspective on the COVID-19 crisis has brought to light important supply chain and environmental impact challenges facing our country. There is an urgent need to secure enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect healthcare providers as well as to protect the public through support of disease prevention practices during the pandemic. We must also find ways to manage the acute disposal problem of millions, even billions, of discarded single-use facemasks. The Government of Canada has recognized the seriousness of these issues in a recent call for compostable disposable surgical masks and respirators. The BioProducts Institute at UBC brings together internationally respected leaders in multidisciplinary bio-based materials research to address one of the most important environmental challenges of our time. In the spring of 2020, our team noticed the buildup of potentially hazardous single-use masks in public spaces, and began to tackle the PPE waste and supply challenges by designing N95 and flat folded surgical masks that could be made entirely from renewable Canadian wood fiber sources, such as wood fibers and lignin. The success in the prototyping that followed indicated great promise and a realistic solution to producing enough PPE for our country, that could be made-in-Canada. Most importantly, such a solution is cost effective and will cut down on plastic waste and reduce the impact on our environment through use of these new compostable facemasks. To create these environmentally friendly solutions, it is important to be able to: 1) accurately and reproducibly measure the filtration effectiveness and benchmark the materials against accepted national and international standards; 2) have the ability to rapidly process facemask samples for measurement to compare the effectiveness and suitability of different filtration media and compositions; 3) provide HQP with an important training opportunity and skills experience that will support them as future career scientists. Our team has already obtained research funding to support this project and completed much of the preliminary materials work but the key element preventing us from further developing fully bio-based masks is the ability to access the necessary filtration metrics. The PALAS Respiratory Mask Tester with Bipolar Discharge System and Mas-Q-Check Protective Mask Tester requested in this proposal will allow us to accelerate our efforts and deploy facemasks with proven performance and proper certification. It will also allow us to refine and expand on current prototypes to design the most effective PPE for Canadian applications.