Projectile Fluid Penetration and Flammability of Respirators and other Head/Facial Personal Protective Equipment (FPFPPE)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires surgical masks (SMs) and surgical N95 respirators used in healthcare to meet certain fluid resistance and flammability levels. NIOSH’s National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (NPPTL) investigated the fluid penetration and flammability of respirators and other head/facial personal protective equipment to determine their efficacy in reducing healthcare workers’ risk for occupational exposures to infectious microorganisms and injury due to accidental fires in surgical settings. The results from this study showed that FDA cleared SMs and surgical N95 respirators were resistant to synthetic blood penetration (Rengasamy et al. 2014) and met the flammability levels (Rengasamy et al. 2018) as expected. Seven out of eleven non-FDA cleared NIOSH-approved N95 filtering facepiece respirator models also passed the synthetic blood penetration and flammability tests. NPPTL tested five models of powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) hoods and all models showed