[sherbondy]

My wife has been selling NIOSH-approved KN95 [1] masks to folks in the US for the past few months. First she tried to supply them directly to hospitals but ran into a harrowing amount of red tape. Then she listed them on eBay but got banned for “price gouging” despite listing at a lower rate than many of the approved sellers. Now she’s just selling the remaining inventory directly, and completely deterred from trying anything like this again because of all of the obstacles through this process.

Here’s her site FWIW ($128 for a box of 50, $2.56 unit price): https://www.wesupplyppe.com/product-page/KN95-2

[1] https://coronavirus.health.ok.gov/kn95s

[otterley]

Are they really NIOSH approved? NIOSH doesn’t approve KN95 masks[1]. Also, I thought elastic straps have to go around the head instead of the ears to obtain approval.

Can we see the approval certificate?

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/usernotices/counterfeitResp....

[sherbondy]

You are right, I was mistaken, sorry for the misinformation! They went though the NIOSH modified testing protocol, not the official approval process.

They have been tested for respirator filter efficiency only and were found to exceed 99% filter efficiency: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/results/...

But they are explicitly not NIOSH approved and as mentioned have an ear loop design whereas seemingly all approved masks go around the head. Wish I could edit/remove the original posting.