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Inside the Battelle N95 decontamination plant

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Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced Wednesday a program that will provide free N95 respirator decontamination to eligible hospitals and first responder crews that don’t have enough masks. The federally funded and FDA-approved Battelle Critical Care Decontamination System uses vaporous hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate tens of thousands of masks a day at a single location, Wolf said in a statement, and each respirator can be decontaminated as many as 20 times before it needs to be thrown out.

A contract worker walks past a box of contaminated N95 masks in side a Battelle decontamination system unit used for N95 mask decontamination for healthcare professionals free of charge at a warehouse in Glen Mills, Delaware County on Friday, May 1, 2020. Battelle was awarded a contract by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide N95 decontamination at no charge.
A contract worker walks past a box of contaminated N95 masks in side a Battelle decontamination system unit used for N95 mask decontamination for healthcare professionals free of charge at a warehouse in Glen Mills, Delaware County on Friday, May 1, 2020. Battelle was awarded a contract by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide N95 decontamination at no charge.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer
    by Yong Kim
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