Evaluation of gowns and coveralls used by medical personnel working with Ebola patients against simulated bodily fluids using an Elbow Lean Test

ABSTRACT

Gowns and coveralls are important components of protective ensembles used during the management of known or suspected Ebola patients. In this study, an Elbow Lean Test was used to obtain a visual semi-quantitative measure of the resistance of medical protective garments to the penetration of two bodily fluid simulants. Tests were done on swatches of continuous and discontinuous regions of fabrics cut from five gowns and four coveralls at multiple elbow pressure levels (2–44 PSI). Swatches cut from the continuous regions of one gown and two coveralls did not have any strike-through. For discontinuous regions, only the same gown consistently resisted fluid strike-through. As hypothesized, with the exception of one garment, fluid strike-through increased with higher applied elbow pressure, was higher for lower fluid surface tension, and was higher for the discontinuous regions of the protective garments.

KEYWORDS:

• Ebola
• Elbow Lean Test
• medical garment
• strike-through
• synthetic blood

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Tyler Brady at NIOSH for his help on this study; Edward Fisher, William King, Jay Parker, and Jung-Hyun (Kenny) Kim at NIOSH for their review of the manuscript and valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclaimer

The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Mention of product names does not imply endorsement. The authors identify no conflicts of interest in the conduct of this study.