A critique of Occupational Safety and Health Administration's halfmask respirator assigned protection factor

Abstract

Halfmask air‐purifying respirators are used by millions of workers to reduce inhaling air contaminants, both chemical (e.g., asbestos, styrene) and biological (e.g., SARS‐CoV‐2, Mycobacterium tuberculosis). In 2006, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) promulgated a standard that gave halfmask respirators an assigned protection factor (APF) of 10. This signified that OSHA assumes a fit‐tested and trained wearer will experience a 10% maximum total inward leakage of contaminated air into the facepiece. To derive APF = 10, OSHA analyzed data from 16 workplace studies of the efficacy of halfmask respirators worn against particulate contaminants. In this commentary, I contend that, in considering the data, OSHA made several errors that overstated halfmask respirator efficacy. The errors were (i) failing to properly account for within‐wearer and between‐wearer variability in respirator efficacy; (ii) ignoring the effect of particle deposition in the respiratory tract; (iii) aggregating unbalanced data within and between studies, and effectively double‐counting the data in some studies; and (iv) ignoring the effect that particle size exerts in penetrating respirator facepiece leak paths. The net result is that OSHA's APF = 10 can lead to excessive toxicant exposure for many workers.