A Study on Penetration of Ultrafine Particles through Commercially Available Masks at Manufacturing Sites

Workers at the manufacturing sites are always under respiratory health hazard, due to the high concentration of airborne particles. The protection level of N95 commercially available masks are primarily tested against microlevel particles. However, there has been very limited work with submicron ultrafine particles, which penetrates deeper into the human respiratory system. In this presentation, the effectiveness of some of these masks against ultrafine particles at various commercial manufacturing sites will be discussed. The results indicate that under most of the conditions the performances of the masks were satisfactory only allowing 6% or lower percentage of particles penetrate through it