Originally published at: CanadaMasq Q100 Review - A Fantastic Earloop Respirator!
If you’ve ever looked at healthcare workers and the personal protective equipment they wear, you would have likely noticed the respirators they usually rely on are N95s (or equivalent) with headbands. This is because, while NIOSH is looking into opening up the standard, it only accepts respirators with headbands for testing. This is due to the belief that respirators with headbands offer a superior fit to their earloop counterparts. For the most part, this is true. While some earloop respirators fit individuals better than headband variants, we see better fit-test results on average from devices with headbands. Due to this,…