Could a cotton-silk combo filter SARS-CoV-2?
Published April 24, 2020
I take anything from the American Chemical Society with a grain of salt, but this is notable because of my earlier post about how cloth makes a poor virus filter. The ACS is claiming that a combination of cotton (tightly woven) and silk (can hold a static electric charge) will work well.One layer of a tightly woven cotton sheet combined with two layers of polyester-spandex chiffon — a sheer fabric often used in evening gowns — filtered out the most aerosol particles (80-99%, depending on particle size), with performance close to that of an N95 mask material. Substituting the chiffon with natural silk or flannel, or simply using a cotton quilt with cotton-polyester batting, produced similar results.
