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Many N95s are rated for a month (20 days) of 8 hours use. If you're only using them for a few hours a day you can stretch their life by quite a bit.



That's what I've been doing with a pack of N100s and it works fine. The problem is threefold: leaving it in a car out in the sun will quickly melt the glue holding the plastic filter to the mask, after a few uses it just quickly gets contaminated on the inside unless you're obsessive about decontamination before taking the mask off each time, and that month rating is because the plastic fibers used to make the electrostatic filter dry out and crumble, which can also be pretty bad for your lungs.


Why don't you cycle 3-4 of them, wearing a different one each day? Viruses won't survive for longer than 3 days inside, so cycling multiple masks would solve the possible contamination issue.


what conditions are present to make this a constant? just heat and oxygen? moisture?


70F / 21C and 50% RH or something close to that, is how standard "indoor" environmental conditions are tested in general.


In my experience I haven't picked up anything because I wasn't the best about decontamination, but I have picked up something when I wore a surgical mask instead of an N95 mask.


I’ve been using one for a while. I put it on for 30 minutes or so for only grocery shopping. Then stick it in a paper bag and don’t touch it for 7 days. Repeat.




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