The N95 mask

An excerpt from a long but fascinating story in the Fast Company website with the title The untold origin story of the N95 mask

THE FIRST MODERN RESPIRATOR IS BORN FROM PLAGUE—AND RACISM

Healthcare workers in “anti-plague masks” during the 1911 Manchurian plague.
[Photo: courtesy University of Cambridge/Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities
and Social Sciences (CRASSH, The University of Cambridge)/The University of Hong
Kong Libraries]

In the fall of 1910, a plague broke out across Manchuria—what we know now as Northern China—which was broken up in politically complex jurisdictions shared between China and Russia.

“It’s apocalyptic. Unbelievable. It kills 100% of those infected, no one survives. And it kills them within 24 to 48 hours of the first symptoms,” says Lynteris. “No one has come across something like this in modern times, and it is similar to the descriptions of Black Death.”

What followed was a scientific arms race, to deduce what was causing the plague and stop it. “Both Russia and China want to prove themselves worthy and scientific enough, because that would lead to a claim of sovereignty,” says Lynteris. “Whomever is scientific enough should be given control of this rich and important area.”

The Chinese Imperial Court brought in a doctor named Lien-teh Wu to head its efforts. He was born in Penang and studied medicine at Cambridge. Wu was young, and he spoke lousy Mandarin. In a plague that quickly attracted international attention and doctors from around the world, he was “completely unimportant,” according to Lynteris. But after conducting an autopsy on one of the victims, Wu determined that the plague was not spread by fleas, as many suspected, but through the air.

Expanding upon the surgery masks he’d seen in the West, Wu developed a heartier mask from gauze and cotton, which wrapped securely around one’s face and added several layers of cloth to filter inhalations. His invention was a breakthrough, but some doctors still doubted its efficacy.

“There’s a famous incident. He’s confronted by a famous old hand in the region, a French doctor [Gérald Mesny] . . . and Wu explains to the French doctor his theory that plague is pneumonic and airborne,” Lynteris says. “And the French guy humiliates him . . . and in very racist terms says, ‘What can we expect from a Chinaman?’ And to prove this point, [Mesny] goes and attends the sick in a plague hospital without wearing Wu’s mask, and he dies in two days with plague.”

Other doctors in the region quickly developed their own masks. “Some are . . . completely strange things,” Lynteris says. “Hoods with glasses, like diving masks.”

A streetcar conductor and passenger in Seattle wearing masks during the 1918 pandemic.
[Photo: Wiki Commons]

But Wu’s mask won out because in empirical testing, it protected users from bacteria. According to Lynteris, it was also a great design. It could be constructed by hand out of materials that were cheap and in ready supply. Between January and February of 1911, mask production ramped up to unknown numbers. Medical staff wore them, soldiers wore them, and some everyday people wore them, too. Not only did that help thwart the spread of the plague; the masks became a symbol of modern medical science looking an epidemic right in the eye.

Wu’s mask quickly became an icon through international newspaper reports. “The mask was a very novel thing . . . it had an effect of strangeness, which the press loved, but you imagine a black-and-white photograph with a white mask—it reads well,” says Lynteris. “It’s a marketing success.”

When the Spanish flu arrived in 1918, Wu’s mask was well-known among scientists and even much of the public. Companies around the globe increased production of similar masks to help abate the spread of flu.

The story continued by saying that the N95 was made for the industries but it had arrived just in time for use in the hospitals too. "The N95 mask is a descendant of Wu’s design," the writer Mark Wilson noted. "Through World War I and World War II, scientists invented air-filtering gas masks that wrapped around your entire head to clean the air supply. Similar masks, loaded with fiberglass filters, began to be used in the mining industry to prevent black lung."

To read the whole story, please click here.