Dry Heating and UV Disinfection for PPE: Is it Practical?

The COVID-19 pandemic created several health and safety supply chain disruptions including a major shift in chemical, equipment, and safety gear availability. Personal protective equipment (PPE) became one of the first items cleaning professionals on hazardous projects struggled to find. With a surge in hospital visits, medical staff struggled to have the inventory needed, and other industries suffered as a result likewise. Although reusable PPE gowns have helped to counteract some of these issues, many leaders wonder if there isn’t simply a way to clean the standard PPE items using methods such as dry heating or UV disinfection.

Currently, recommended disinfecting options include soap or hot water immersion, alcohol spraying, high-pressure steam, dry heating, UV radiation, vaporized hydrogen peroxide, ethylene oxide, and moist heat—but are these solutions actually effective?

In a recent study by The Journal of Hospital Infection entitled, “Filtration efficiency of N95 filtering facepiece respirators during multi-cycles of “8-hour simulated donning + disinfection,” scientists discovered that dry heating and UV radiation treatments served as the most effective ways to clean N95 respirators. Their conclusion stated, “For N95 respirators after multi-cycles of 8-hour donning, dry heating, and UV radiation treatments have a minimal effect on their filtration efficiency (within ±0.5%). That is, both methods are applicable to disinfection of reused respirators.”

Cleaning professionals can use these methods to save money and help stabilize the supply chain. However, it is advised that these respirators are disposed of after roughly three to four uses as their filtration becomes damaged within that time frame making it hazardous even when the equipment is sufficiently disinfected.