I Bought Some N95 Masks At Menards - But I'm Not Sure About Them....

[KY_EnviroGuy]

7. The most important question is whether it's a real certified N95 or fake.

N95 is a particulate capture standard set by NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory) and manufacturers cannot legally label products as N95 unless they have been tested and certified. I have heard there's a lot of imported masks around (especially on-line) labeled N95 that have not been NIOSH certified.

They all work the same except a special provision for Surgical N95 (I think it has to do with sterility) which you don't need.

You can check your masks to see if they are indeed real N95s here: https://www2a.cdc.gov/drds/cel/cel_form_code.asp

You need to select the proper search category, which I believe is "N95 Filtering Facepiece Respirators (N95 FFRs)" then click on "View Quick Results".

This should be the correct certification list for all common consumer N95s: https://www2a.cdc.gov/drds/cel/cel_results.asp?startrecord=1&maxrecords=50&NCSearch=NCQS&QSearch=N95_FFR

You can also type your brand and model number into their search window.

I prefer N100s by 3M over N95s because they have a soft rubber seal ring around the mask perimeter and therefore seal much better. Although it may be more expensive, it's best to buy masks from a professional safety supply company or an industrial supply company such as WW Grainger (see https://www.grainger.com/category/safety/respiratory-protection/disposable-respirators-masks/general-purpose-disposable-respirators-dust-masks?categoryIndex=3 as an example of an industrial supplier).

I personally don't trust everyday disposable N95s for protection against COVID in closed environments with lots of maskless people because they really do not seal well. If I had to be in a place like that often, I would wear a rubber half-face dual-cartridge mask such as 3M's 6200 mask with P100 cartridges.

Good luck.....