Fast Company: “During the SARS outbreak in Toronto in 2003, healthcare workers raised concerns about N95 masks, saying that the respirators were uncomfortable to wear for long shifts and could lead to headaches and shortness of breath. In the aftermath of SARS, the U.S. government issued a report arguing that the masks needed to be redesigned for future epidemics, citing 28 ways the masks needed to improve. Then the fear of pandemics faded from most people’s minds. But Tobias Franoszek and Natasha Duwin were working on making a new mask that fulfilled those benchmarks. “N95 masks and mask technology hadn’t really changed in a very long time,” says Franoszek, cofounder of Octo Safety Devices, the company making the new mask, called the Octo Respirator Mask, or ORM. Three years ago, long before the emergence of COVID-19, Franoszek and Duwin started exploring alternatives, acquiring the rights to a new mask design that eventually became the ORM. Unlike an N95, the mask is designed for reuse and can be sterilized by boiling…”