Respirator Standards
Standard medical masks are designed to be worn only to cover the mouth and nose without covering the mouth or nose tightly enough. This allows air to enter and exit the side of general medical masks. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) or the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set protective equipment standards The use of equipment capable of filtering these pathogens at the N95 or FFP3 & FFP2 levels is recommended. N95 standards are set by the NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) of the United States. In European countries there is a standard system for defining air filtration equipment. The filtration standard is defined as the FFP (Filtering Face piece) level, referring to the EN 149:2001 standard or the P1/ P2/ P3 standard according to the EN 143 standard.
Particle filtration efficiency with a size greater than or equal to 0.3 microns
It can be seen that the efficiency of filtering particles Greater than or equal to ≥ 0.3 µ of N95 devices and FFP 2 devices have very similar filtration efficiency, with N95 devices having a filtering efficiency of more than 95 % and FFP2 devices having a filtering efficiency of more than 94%. N99 and FFP3 have a filter efficiency of more than 99%.
KN95 vs N95
KN95 is China’s particle filtration standard, referring to GB 2626-2006. KN95 has a filter efficiency of more than 95 %. Comparison standards can be followed between N95, FFE2, KN95 as shown in the table below.
