Read on Twitter
New story: I report on what @tifrarnab calls The Great Mask-erade, the profusion of fake, poor quality N95 respirators flooding the Indian market: https://thewire.in/health/covid-19-counterfeit-n95-masks-cdsco-bis-standards
Things I learnt while reporting for this story: only two Indian companies are certified to make NIOSH-certified N95 masks, while 11 companies are certified to make BIS certified N95 (FFP2) masks. See BIS list here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b33dweOXBNrNUAv1XFVDKhxP-pNamxXk1_flIkKMMv0/edit?pli=1
Without certification and routine quality testing, it is hard to make a mask that works. Because there are too many variations in input materials, like meltblown fabric.
The manufacturing process also has to be fairly tightly controlled. Yet, many people who are not certified by BIS (the only certifying agency in India) are claiming to be certified by DRDO and SITRA (WHO DO NOT CERTIFY MASK)
DRDO and SITRA only test masks *the one time*. If you are a company who is entering the N95 mask business, you need to set up your own quality control system (which certification requires).
Many of the new companies, which are not certified, have no internal labs to test their mask batches for things like particulate filtration efficiency.
So they either send their masks to SITRA, DRDO - which takes a lot of time - or they skip testing :/
Some of them get fake certifications from organisations like NIOSH or BIS or even FDA and WHO. And it is quite hard to spot these fake certificates, unless you have experts like @aniljauhri
Bottomline, crappy masks with fake certificates are reaching not just regular people, but healthcare workers. Most regular people do not need N95 masks - a cloth mask is enough. But hospitals do.
And the lack of quality control is really hurting healthcare workers. CDSCO can take action, but as far I know, it isn't doing anything yet.
Forgot to add. To tackle the lack of testing facilities, some enterprising scientists like @tifrarnab have created their own testers for particulate filtration efficiency and fit testing. While reporting on the story, I also learnt about a similar set up in IISc by @Akshay_IISc
So, those in Bangalore wanting to get masks tested for filtration efficiency can approach IISc.
