New type of face mask for employers

(San Diego, CA) The Research Consortium is excited to announce the creation of a new type of reusable face mask intended to help employers better satisfy OSHA’s general duty requirements. Not just a physical barrier to slow community spread, this US-made cloth face mask is designed and intended to filter air at very high efficiency levels, inhibit dangerous bio-burden build-up and be worn daily for three months, maintaining its effectiveness.

The Stay Safer PRN95+ Protective Face Mask is the unexpected product of research undertaken by RC founder Richard Nicholas who was creating the research institutive when COVID-19 emerged. Encountering a topic that is broad, complex and clouded with misinformation, he shared his findings in a guide. Covering COVID-19, its transmission, face mask efficacy and related regulatory topics (at 72 pages, with 176 sources) it is aptly entitled The Definitive Employer Guide to Purchasing Face Masks for Your Valued Employees. Not able to find an effective, reusable mask that offered any meaningful degree of wearer protection, Nicholas sought to create one.

While studying viral transmission, Nicholas learned that many viruses (e.g., COVID-19) have a protective outer capsule that assumes negative polarity that can be “neutralized”. Electrocuting pathogenic microbes not only better sanitizes inhaled and exhaled air it inhibits dangerous bio-burden build-up on the mask’s surfaces; reduces wearer self-infection; and mitigates the risk of storing/transporting infected masks; each, a key issue.

This mask employs redundant means by which to short circuit any encapsulated microbes it encounters with a positive charge that’s sustained by two sources. Its cotton inner/outer layers, when paired with the silk-chiffon center layers, create a triboelectric air filter. The fabric is made with an ecofriendly, molecularly-bonded QAC antimicrobial created by Dow Chemical. Both methods are proven to be effective against encapsulated, gram-negative microbes. The mask is engineered for a snug fit, tight seal and high breathability.

The Stay Safer mask is managed/produced by Privy Label, a high-tech, private-label clothing design firm, specializing in curated products for targeted audiences. Owing to its complexity, it is handmade from natural, domestically-sourced materials by a network of ten US manufacturers (ensuring that it can be customized and cost-effectively mass-produced). Nicholas says his “mask is unique as it leverages science and technology to both help curb community spread and offer a meaningful degree of wearer protection.” While he touts the mask’s features, Nicholas emphasizes that no face mask, antimicrobial or fabric can claim to be effective against COVID-19 as no commercial entity has been provided with the virus for testing.

Nicholas, a forty-year healthcare industry veteran, believes that large, value-oriented employers will agree with him that “providing employees with a protective mask can only serve to better satisfy OSHA's requirement to furnish a safe, hazard-free workplace”. He is also courting payors (e.g., health insurers, HMOs, TPA) and health systems to make the mask available to their clients and members. Forecasting sustained market demand, the mask is offered on an optional subscription basis that guarantees quarterly replenishment for $3–4/employee/month.

All face mask royalties will go to support the TPA NETWORK Research Consortium, an emerging industry-wide research initiative to help health plan sponsors evaluate new medical technologies and health innovations by conducting payor-focused translational research and enabling more, smarter and less costly clinical studies. To download the Employer Guide, click here . To learn more about the Stay Safer PRN95+ Protective Face Mask click here. To learn more about the Research Consortium go to www.ResearchConsortium.org

555 Saturn Blvd, suite B408
San Diego, CA 92154

The TPA NETWORK Research Consortium, an emerging industry-wide research initiative to help health plan sponsors evaluate new medical technologies and health innovations by conducting payor-focused translational research and enabling more, smarter and less costly clinical studies

This release was published on openPR.