It may be possible to dip your mask in salt water with a little bit of soap and let it dry to turn the mask into an active virus inactivator. The salt + surfactant will make the virus stickier to the mask during particle collisions and will also desiccate and destroy the virus...
...on the fabric. This is likely a critical step for making N95 masks and other masks reusable. With that said, we should figure out whether N95 or P100 masks' integrity are compromised from this wetting procedure. This can help with surgical masks in the meantime.
Note that this study used TWEEN (also known as polysorbate 20: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysorba…), not SDS (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_do…) as a surfactant. SDS is what's found in most household soaps and is substantially physicochemically similar.
"When tested with tightly sealed sides, salt-coated filters showed remarkably higher filtration efficiency than conventional mask filtration layer, and 100% survival rate was observed in mice infected with virus penetrated through salt-coated filters."
"Viruses captured on salt-coated filters exhibited rapid infectivity loss compared to gradual decrease on bare filters. Salt-coated filters proved highly effective in deactivating influenza viruses regardless of subtypes and following storage in harsh environmental conditions."
"The coating solution was prepared by dissolving sodium chloride (NaCl...) .... followed by the addition of Tween 20 (...) to a final concentration of 29.03 w/v% of NaCl and 1 v/v% of Tween 20."
"Lethal infectivity of influenza viruses (...) was examined in 8 week old female inbred BALB/c mice (...) by using the intranasal route. For bare and salt-coated filters, 12 mice per group were infected with individual penetration dosage of influenza virus through each filter."
"To measure time-dependent stability change of virus, virus-laden filters were incubated at ambient conditions for 0, 5, 15, and 60 min after aerosol exposure, and suspended in DI water to reconstitute virus at each time point."
"Salt-coated filters (...) were stored at 37 °C, 70% RH in an incubator (...) for 15 days. Every day, the filters were collected and incubated at ambient conditions for 5 min."
"At 1-day incubation, filtration efficiency was measured ... followed by [a lethal] in vivo infection test."
"Lethal infectivity between two different filter groups (before and after incubation at 37 °C, 70% RH) was compared by measuring body weight change and survival rate of mice after exposure to lethal CA/09 H1N1 aerosols."
