The research described in this article has been published on a preprint server but has not yet been peer-reviewed by scientific or medical experts.
In mid-March, members of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) joined forces with colleagues in Boston’s medical community to answer a question of critical importance during the Covid-19 pandemic: Can gamma irradiation sterilize disposable N95 masks without diminishing the masks’ effectiveness?
This type of personal protective equipment (PPE), which offers protection against infectious particles like coronavirus-laden aerosols, is in desperately short supply worldwide, and medical professionals in Covid-19 hotspots are already rationing the masks. Gamma radiation is commonly used to sterilize hospital foods and equipment surfaces, as well as much of the public’s food supply, and there has been significant interest in determining if it could allow N95 masks to be reused and address the expanding scarcity.
In a study uploaded on March 28 to medRχiv, the preprint server for health sciences, researchers announced their results: N95 masks subjected to cobalt-60 gamma irradiation for sterilization pass a qualitative fit test but lose a significant degree of filtration efficiency. This form of sterilization compromises the masks’ ability to protect medical providers from Covid-19.
The study, NSE’s first research effort related to the pandemic, also drew on the expertise of MIT’s Office of Environment, Health, and Safety.
“One of our students thought gamma irradiation might be a cool solution to a big problem, and I really wanted it to work,” says Michael Short, the Class of ’42 Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, one of the study’s coauthors. “But we quickly recognized that the data went against the hypothesis.”[…]
Read More: Sorry Hulk: Gamma radiation found ineffective in sterilizing N95 masks – ScienceBlog.com
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