The researchers hypothesised that dry heat might be a method to meet all three criteria—decontamination, filtration and fit—without requiring special preparation or leaving any chemical residue.Washington: Fifty minutes of dry heat in an electric cooker, such as a rice cooker or Instant Pot, could effectively sanitise N95 respirator masks, while maintaining their filtration and fit, researchers, including one of Indian origin, have found."The respirators maintained their filtration capacity of more than 95 per cent and kept their fit, still properly seated on the wearer’s face, even after 20 cycles of decontamination in the electric cooker," he said.The team decided to test an electric cooker, a type of device many people have in their pantries.The researchers note that the heat must be dry heat—no water added to the cooker, the temperature should be maintained at 100 degrees Celsius for 50 minutes and a small towel should cover the bottom of the cooker to keep any part of the respirator from coming into direct contact with the heating element.

According to the findings published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, this could enable wearers to safely reuse limited supplies of the respirators, originally intended to be one-time-use items."A cloth mask or surgical mask protects others from droplets the wearer might expel, but a respirator mask protects the wearer by filtering out smaller particles that might carry the virus," said Thanh Nguyen, professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the US..It may be useful for others who may have an N95 respirator at home—for example, from a pre-pandemic home-improvement project—and wish to reuse it, they said."We built a chamber in my aerosol-testing lab specifically to look at the filtration of the N95 respirators, and measured particles going through it," Verma said.They also wanted to find a method that would be widely accessible for people at home."

There are many different ways to sterilise something, but most of them will destroy the filtration or the fit of an N95 respirator," said Professor Vishal Verma from the University of Illinois.However, multiple masks can be stacked to fit inside the cooker at the same time, Nguyen added. Otherwise, it will not offer the right protection," Verma said.They verified that one cooking cycle, which maintains the contents of the cooker at around 100 degrees Celsius for 50 minutes, decontaminated the masks, inside and out, from four different classes of virus, including a coronavirus—and did so more effectively than ultraviolet light.The researchers see potential for the electric-cooker method to be useful for health care workers and first responders, especially those in smaller clinics or hospitals that do not have access to large-scale heat sanitisation equipment."Any sanitation method would need to decontaminate China Reusable Fabric Mask all surfaces of the respirator, but equally important is maintaining the filtration efficacy and the fit of the respirator to the face of the wearer.High demand during the COVID-19 pandemic has created severe shortages of face masks for health care providers and other essential workers, prompting a search for creative approaches to sanitization.

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Thousands of masked protesters still came out onto the streets throughout Saturday despite the mask ban and transport gridlock, although the crowds were smaller than recent rallies.Lam has refused major concessions but struggled to come up with any political solution, leaving police and demonstrators to fight increasingly violent battles as the city tips into recession.The rallies were ignited by a now-scrapped plan to allow extraditions to the mainland, which fuelled fears of an erosion of liberties promised under the 50-year "one country, two systems" model China agreed ahead of the 1997 handover by Britain..On Sunday, the subway operator said 45 stations would open but 48 remained shuttered, many of them in the heart of the citys main tourist districts as well as those neighbourhoods areas hit hardest by the protests and vandalism.The finance hub has been convulsed by widespread chaos in recent days as hard-core protesters trashed dozens of subway stations, vandalised shops, set fires and blocked roads.But opponents and protesters saw it as the start of a slippery slope tipping the international finance hub into authoritarianism."I would say this is one of the most important constitutional cases in the history of Hong Kong," lawmaker Dennis Kwok told reporters outside court on Sunday.Thousands of protesters staged unsanctioned marches and flash mob protests at multiple locations on Saturday, a day after the citys leader outlawed face coverings at protests, invoking colonial-era emergency powers not used for half a century.Pro-democracy lawmakers are seeking an emergency injunction later Sunday in a bid to overturn the face mask ban and declare the emergency powers invalid because they bypass the citys legislature. "We cannot allow rioters any more to destroy our treasured Hong Kong," Lam said in a stony-faced video statement on Saturday.

Lam has defended her use of the emergency powers and says she is willing to make more executive orders if the violence continues. If this emergency law just gets a pass just like that Hong Kong will be deemed into a very black hole.Last deployed in 1967, the powers allow chief executive Carrie Lam to make "any regulations whatsoever" during a time of public danger. The move was welcomed by government supporters and Beijing."Hong Kong Positioning Printing Face Mask Factory has been battered by four months of huge and increasingly violent pro-democracy protests. In the name of law they are trying to hurt the people and they try to crush the opposition.That night masked protesters went on a rampage in dozens of locations, trashing subway stations and businesses with mainland China ties.

The worst clashes to date erupted on Tuesday as China celebrated 70 years of Communist Party rule, with a teenager shot and wounded by police as he attacked an officer.Protester demands include an independent inquiry into the police, an amnesty for the more than 2,000 people arrested and universal suffrage — all requests rejected by Lam and Beijing.But protesters have vowed to keep hitting the streets.Hong Kong: The majority of Hong Kongs subway stations remained closed Sunday as the city braced for more protests with pro-democracy activists vowing to hit the streets and opposition lawmakers trying to overturn a face mask ban.Online forums used by the largely leaderless protest movement to organise were encouraging protesters to hold an unsanctioned rally in the citys Victoria Park later Sunday.A 14-year-old boy was then shot and wounded on Friday night when a plainclothes police officer who was surrounded by a mob of protesters throwing petrol bombs fired his sidearm. But with most of the stations in that area of the city closed it was unclear if they would be able to muster decent numbers."This could be the very last constitutional fight on our part."

The anti-face mask law is the first step," Hosun Lee, a protester in Causeway Bay, told AFP, saying he feared more laws under the emergency order were on the way.The citys subway system — which carries four million people daily — was shut down entirely on Friday night and throughout Saturday, bringing much of the metropolis to a halt.After Beijing and local leaders took a hard line, the demonstrations snowballed into a wider movement calling for more democratic freedoms and police accountability. Major supermarket chains and malls announced they were closing, leading to long lines and panic buying as residents stocked up on essentials.

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