Scaccabarozzi Diletta, Ponti Jessica, Gioria Sabrina, Mehn Dora, Sinkko Taija, Ardente Fulvio, Fumagalli Francesco
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 23;20(1):e0313041. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0313041. eCollection 2025.
Disposable filtering face piece respirators (FFRs) are not approved for reuse as standard of care. However, lessons learnt from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, FFRs decontamination and reuse may be needed as crisis capacity strategy to ensure availability in medical facilities. We studied a decontamination methodology based on atmospheric pressure plasma technology, which allows for rapid, contact-free decontamination without utilisation of harmful chemicals, and suitable to access small pores and microscopic filters openings. Promising performances in terms of bioburden reduction (Log6) were achieved while imparting mainly transient chemical surface modifications to the masks filtering layers. The plasma decontamination process proposed was also considered in terms of the environmental impact of re-use technology for FFR medical devices in order to understand its sustainability. This study assessed the feasibility of an atmospheric pressure plasma approach for the decontamination of disposable filtering face piece respirators (FFR) or respiratory masks commonly used in hospital settings.
一次性过滤面罩呼吸器（FFR）作为标准护理用品不被批准重复使用。然而，从新冠疫情中吸取的经验教训表明，作为一种危机应对能力策略，可能需要对FFR进行消毒和重复使用，以确保医疗设施中有足够的供应。我们研究了一种基于大气压等离子体技术的消毒方法，该方法能够实现快速、非接触式消毒，无需使用有害化学物质，并且适合处理小孔和微观过滤器开口。在减少生物负载（Log6）方面取得了有前景的效果，同时对面罩过滤层主要产生短暂的化学表面改性。为了了解其可持续性，还从FFR医疗设备重复使用技术的环境影响角度考虑了所提出的等离子体消毒过程。本研究评估了大气压等离子体方法对医院环境中常用的一次性过滤面罩呼吸器（FFR）或呼吸面罩进行消毒的可行性。
