A shortage of Personal Protective Equipment or PPE in hospitals and clinics has led to community-based, mask-making projects.
Lynda Pond is a Registered Nurse in Eugene and currently serves as President of Oregon Nurses Association. When she heard that some hospitals were mandating their employees re-use masks up to five times, it moved her to action.
Pond and several other Sacred Heart nurses started a Facebook page called Lane County PPE to share ideas about how to sew safe cloth masks. Quilting fabric is recommended, although high quality bedsheets may be used if you really want to crank out a lot.
Pond says each mask pattern leaves the bottom seam open so a filter can be inserted.
“We’re using HEPA grade vacuum cleaner bags which filter out 99% of all particles. The feeling is that just a regular cloth mask without any filtration is maybe 50% effective. The N-95’s that everyone talks about that filter out pretty much everything in the hospital setting are the gold standard. And it’s been discovered that if you put this HEPA filter in, you get as close to a N-95 as you’re gonna get from a homemade mask.”
Pond’s group is collaborating with The Seamsters (think Teamsters) and the University of Oregon Sustainability Project has mask patterns on their website.
TO FIND WAYS TO HELP AND GET THE MASK PATTERN WITH SEAM SLIT FOR HEPA FILTER ADDITION, click here:
http://sustainability.uoregon.edu/
For more information about the Seamsters mask making efforts:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/facemasksforhealthcare/?ref=share
Hundreds of masks have already been made by volunteers and Pond says there is no sign of stopping. Completed masks should washed and placed in clean plastic bags. They can be safely dropped off in a drop box at Representative Peter DeFazio’s campaign office in downtown Eugene, (222 E. 11th Ave, Eugene OR 97401) day or night.