Seattle is one of first in nation to receive powerful new mask decontamination system

CAMP MURRAY, Wash. - A revolutionary new system that can decontaminate up to 80,000 protective masks each day for reuse by health care workers has been delivered to Washington state and should be ready for operation here as early as next week.



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Officials say the Seattle area is one of the first in the nation to receive one of these systems, which will dramatically reduce the number of new masks that will be needed here and give added protection to doctors and nurses on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

The device, dubbed the Critical Care Decontamination System, uses a hydrogen peroxide vaporization process to sanitize large numbers of N95 masks simultaneously and allow them to be reused over and over.

The system was designed by researchers at Ohio's Battelle laboratories in July 2016 after a group of federal agencies recommended that protective masks for health care workers should be capable of being repeatedly decontaminated during a crisis.

The crisis is now here, and Battelle quickly began manufacturing the systems in March for use across the nation.

One of the systems was delivered to Camp Murray earlier this week and is now being assembled, said state Military Department spokesperson Karina Shagren.

"Testing has not occurred yet, but we hope it will be operational sometime next week," Shagren said.

She said Washington state has been struggling to secure enough personal protective equipment, including N95 masks - a commonly worn, filtered protection against airborne germs.



"The new technology will allow us to sanitize and reuse tens of thousands of masks per day, which will reduce the number of masks we need to find and help keep our medical professionals well protected as they care for patients," she said.

Health officials are now working out the logistics of how the used masks will be collected and redistributed.

The system uses eight repurposed cargo-shipping containers, four of which are decontamination chambers, powered by a hydrogen peroxide vaporization generator and designed to be shipped by truck to wherever needed.

Here’s how it works. The masks are collected, packaged, and then shipped to a Battelle Critical Care Decontamination System. Then, they are bar-coded, loaded into the machines.

“The systems are set up for 20-foot conics boxes with vaporized hydrogen peroxide, the system that moves between those systems. We are in parallel identifying individuals and training them --that will be deployed with the systems --to be able to operate them and to be able to have these systems running 24/7,” said Matt Zenmanek, Battelle Division Manager in National Security in an informational video.

“The decon procedure is about 3 1/2 hours. At that point, staff will do a verification that there's a no defects with any of the PPE,” said Will Richter, Principal Research Scientist at Battelle. “Our study showed we could decontaminate these up to 20 times for reuse.”

According to Battelle, the masks will be verified to make sure they are free of decontaminates before they are packaged and returned.

Decontamination systems have been shipped to the New York City area, Boston, and one also is already in operation in Ohio.

The Critical Care Decontamination System got emergency approval this week by the FDA.



“This system has been brought up idea to deployment in 2.5 weeks. Everyone has been moving very quickly,” said Battelle Spokeswoman Katy Delaney. “This kind of work has never been done before. The focus now is to get the team trained and get the system set up so we can begin this important work.”



Battelle has other systems in production and currently is manufacturing five systems per week for shipment to coronavirus hot spots across the country.

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