Tips for Managing Personal Protective Equipment in Your Stockpile: Respirator Selection and Purchase
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Happy Respiratory Protection Week 2024! Another year provides another opportunity to highlight resources to support informed workplace respiratory protection practices. NIOSH has been at the forefront of this effort for decades, testing and approving respirators used in U.S. occupational settings while also striving to provide the science necessary to inform complex respiratory protection decisions. Respiratory Protection Week 2024 launches this new blog series filled with practical advice for effectively managing stockpiled respirators and in later postings, surgical gowns.
Maybe you’re in charge of purchasing personal protective equipment (PPE) but aren’t sure what factors to consider. Or maybe you’re tasked with deciding when it’s time to be “out with the old and in with the new” – but that’s certainly easier said than done. Maybe you’re doing your best to store PPE in a way that won’t cause it to degrade but could use some help to figure out what this looks like for your facility.
Or maybe you’re just frustrated because you can’t find answers to your stockpiling questions. We hope this blog series will help!
So what’s up with the squirrel comic? We can’t help but admire stockpiling expertise when we see it. Our furry friends are very strategic when it comes to stockpiling nuts for times when availability is scarce. Did you know that squirrels select nuts of varying sizes and nutritional value, so their bodies are better protected when exposed to harsh conditions? Or that they organize nuts by sizes in their stockpiles? They even take protective measures to ensure their stockpiles are usable when needed. We’re hoping that part of you can relate to our furry friend’s struggles and will reward our creative analogy by sharing this blog series with your trusted network of PPE stockpilers.
Don’t worry though, NIOSH isn’t going to get too squirrely on you. Rest assured, our tips throughout this series are grounded in extensive NIOSH studies, including the evaluation of nearly 4,000 respirators and more than 1,000 surgical gowns from 10 stockpile facilities across the nation. Additionally, we are taking into consideration consensus studies and workshops conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine as well as studies performed in collaboration with universities and hospitals.
This first blog focuses on respirator selection and purchasing, keeping two questions in mind:
How do I know if my respirators are approved by NIOSH?
What respirators make the most sense for my stockpiling needs?
How do I know if my respirators are approved by NIOSH?
NIOSH Approved® respirators went through a rigorous process to obtain NIOSH’s approval. Even after granting its approval, NIOSH works hard to protect the NIOSH Approved brand by auditing products and their manufacturing sites for ongoing compliance with approval requirements.
Products that are beyond their shelf life, or have had their NIOSH approval rescinded or revoked, are no longer considered NIOSH Approved respirators. So how do you confirm that your respirators remain approved?
Tip #1: become familiar with NIOSH’s Certified Equipment List (CEL), Conformity Assessment Notices and the NPPTL Listserv.
The CEL lists every respirator with an active NIOSH approval. It’s extremely important to consult the CEL for both your initial purchase and as part of a routine to ensure that the respirators you already purchased still have an active NIOSH approval.
You may be thinking: if it had a NIOSH approval when I bought it, why wouldn’t it be approved forever? Respirators are the last line of defense against life-threatening hazards, and NIOSH requires that approval holders (the respirator manufacturers) continue to maintain strict quality practices and product support even after obtaining our approval. We periodically audit their manufacturing sites and also conduct post market evaluation of their products to ensure that they continue to perform. However, if the approval holder no longer maintains their approval (in the case of a rescinded[1] or revoked[2] approval), this could lead to lack of customer support in cases of degraded product, issues with individual products or entire product lots, or a lack of attention to necessary recalls. Anyone putting on a respirator to protect their life or health deserves to know that an approval holder is continually maintaining that product and will urgently address any identified defects.
Therefore, we encourage you to proactively confirm that your stockpiled respirators remain approved by NIOSH. Make it a habit to check NIOSH’s CEL and to also check our Conformity Assessment Notices that flag rescinded and revoked approvals. Sign up to receive alerts when a new Notice is posted along with other important information.
Tip #2: Always be wary of a “too good to be true” sale of NIOSH Approved respirators.
Often, these great deals are respirators that are no longer approved by NIOSH. It may also be a sign of counterfeit respirators or a sign that the labeling intentionally misleads consumers into thinking they are NIOSH Approved respirators when they are not. Increased demand and public awareness of NIOSH Approved respirators during the COVID-19 pandemic increased the prevalence of these purchasing challenges. This website will help you identify examples of bad actors.
More than 10 NIOSH certification marks are registered in the United States (e.g., P100® and HE®) and some are even registered outside the U.S. (e.g., N95® and NIOSH Approved®). These registered marks allow NIOSH to better combat bad actors.
NIOSH also established a “brand protection team” to search distributor/vendor platforms to proactively identify bad actors and work with distributors/vendors to have these respirators removed from their sites.
What do you do if you’re stockpiling respirators beyond their shelf life or are otherwise no longer approved by NIOSH? We plan to address this question in the next blog in this series! For now, let’s stay focused on today’s theme of selection and purchase.
What respirators make the most sense for my stockpiling needs?
Tip #3: Consider who you are stockpiling respirators for. Some common options include:
- Your employees who are under a Respiratory Protection Program (RPP).
- Employees at major medical centers across your county or state who are under an RPP that is managed by their organizations. Click here for a Hospital Respiratory Protection Program that your organization also manages.
- Citizens in your county who are not under an RPP.
Tip #4: If you are selecting and purchasing respirators for employees under an RPP, reach out to the RPP Manager.
This individual will know exactly what types of respirators are being used as well as specific models. For tight-fitting respirators, like disposable filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) and reusable elastomeric half mask respirators (EHMRs), knowing the specific respirator models to which the employees were fit tested is extremely important – stockpiling the same models means they don’t have to go through initial fit testing when receiving your stockpiled respirators.
Tip #5: Even if the current RPP only encompasses disposable N95 FFRs, discuss the potential benefits of proactively integrating reusable respirators such as EHMRs and powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs) into the RPP during times of routine health delivery.
Integrating EHMRs into their RPP during times of routine health delivery will identify the respirator models that fit the employees in advance of a shortage. This would allow you to consider stockpiling reusable EHMRs with N95 or P100 filters or cartridges. Advanced coordination helps to ensure that all the necessary processes and procedures to use EHMRs are already captured in the RPP if a shortage occurs.
Remember, some employees are not able to use tight-fitting respirators (FFRs and EHMRs) because they are unable to be clean-shaven for medical, cultural, religious, or other personal reasons. Consider stockpiling loose-fitting PAPRs for these individuals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, NIOSH published a rule that established an approval pathway for PAPRs that are ideally suited for use in healthcare settings—look for the PAPR100-N® and PAPR100-P® certification marks! Additionally, stockpiling some tight-fitting PAPRs may come in handy if employees require extremely high levels of protection, beyond what can be provided by an FFR, EHMR, or loose-fitting PAPR.
Tip #6: Establish processes to manage EHMR and PAPR components.
The individual components may not have the same shelf life as the main respirator unit and may need to be purchased separately—e.g., filters and cartridges for EHMRs and batteries for PAPRs. Remember to read the instructions for batteries before storing them, as some respirator manufacturers may recommend charging them on a regular basis.
Tip #7: If you are unable to coordinate with an RPP Manager, purchase respirators that meet ASTM F3407 – 21 Standard Test Method for Respirator Fit Capability for Negative-Pressure Half-Facepiece Particulate Respirators (RFC Standard).
If you are stockpiling respirators for individuals not under an RPP, or you are unable to connect with the RPP Managers, all is not lost. You can still make great respirator selections and purchases. While you may not know the specific respirator types and models in use, the RFC Standard provides a method to evaluate respirators to demonstrate that the sizes offered for that respirator model will fit 50% of the U.S. population.
Reach out to several approval holders to request a list of their NIOSH Approved respirators that meet the RFC Standard and consider selecting and purchasing respirators from those lists. You may also want to consider requiring compliance with the RFC Standard for any purchase contracts.
That’s all we have for this topic. Stay tuned for blog #2 in this series in which we will dive into the important consideration of shelf life.
Happy Respiratory Protection Week!
Attribution Statement:
P100, PAPR100-N, PAPR100-P, and HE are certification marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) registered in the United States.
N95 and NIOSH Approved are certification marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) registered in the United States and several international jurisdictions.
Susan Moore, PhD, is the Associate Director for Science in the NIOSH National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory.
Lee Greenawald, PhD, is the Branch Chief of the Evaluation and Testing Branch in the NIOSH National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory
Aris Copeland is a Health Communications Intern in the NIOSH National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory
Jackie Cichowicz is the Lead Health Communications Specialist in the NIOSH National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory
Frank Page is a Visual Information Specialist in the NIOSH National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory
[1] Rescinded – The approval holder voluntarily requests the certificate of approval be withdrawn for a product.
[2] Revoked – NIOSH reserves the right to revoke, for cause, any certificate of approval issued pursuant to the provisions of 42 CFR Part 84. Such causes include, but are not limited to, misuse of approval labels and markings, misleading advertising, and failure to maintain or cause to be maintained the quality control requirements of the certificate of approval.
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