Background: Millions of people rely on N95 filtering facepiece respirators to reduce the risk of airborne particles and\r\nprevent them from respiratory infections. However, there are no respirator fit testing and training regulations in China.\r\nMeanwhile, no study has been conducted to investigate the fit of various respirators. The objective of this study was to\r\ninvestigate whether people obtained adequate fit when wearing N95 filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) used widely in\r\nChina.\r\nMethods: Fifty adult participants selected using the Chinese respirator fit test panel donned 10 common models of N95\r\nFFRs. Fit factors (FF) and inward leakage were measured using the TSI PortaCount Plus. Each subject was tested with three\r\nreplications for each model. A subject was considered to pass the fit test when at least two of the three FFs were greater\r\nthan 100. Two models were conducted fit tests before and after training to assess the role of training.\r\nResults: The geometric mean FFs for each model and trained subjects ranged from ,10 to 74.0. The fifth percentile FFs for\r\nonly two individual respirator models were greater than 10 which is the expected level of performance for FFRs. The passing\r\nrates for these two models of FFRs were 44.7% and 20.0%. The passing rates were less than 10.0% for the other eight\r\nmodels. There were 27 (54%) participants who passed none of the 10 FFRs. The geometric mean FFs for both models when\r\nthe subjects received training (49.7 and 74.0) were significantly larger than those when the same group of subjects did not\r\nreceive any training (29.0 and 30.9) (P,0.05).\r\nConclusions: FFRs used widely in China should be improved according to Chinese facial dimensions. Respirator users could\r\nbenefit from respirator training and fit testing before using respirators
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