Coronavirus: in a pop-up lab in Beijing, this firm is trying to clean up China’s murky face mask industry

Tucked away in an unassuming residential building at the edge of the bustling Sanlitun shopping area in downtown Beijing, a small start-up has become a magnet for coronavirus-related requests from around the world. Smart Air has converted a nondescript bedroom into a laboratory, where last week it started using its self-developed equipment to test the effectiveness of 2020’s hottest commodity: face masks made in China. With the world in dire need of masks to help contain their own coronavirus outbreaks, China has stepped in to meet demand. In March, it exported almost 4 billion masks, customs data show, having itself imported 2 billion during its own outbreak in January and February. But at the same time, scepticism over the quality of Chinese supplies has surged, with defective masks and other medical equipment shipped out of the country making a flurry of headlines over recent months. Part of the problem is the manic nature of the market. Up to 85 per cent of the world’s masks are produced by China, with tens of thousands of new players swarming into the market since the pandemic began, seeking a quick buck when sales of their regular products have been hit by the virus containment efforts around the world. These companies came from a wide range of different industrial fields, from electric vehicle manufacturing to blockchain technology development, but few have experience in making masks. “So you have all these factories in the ‘wild west’, but what are they actually making? Are their products actually any good?” said Paddy Robertson, the chief executive of Smart Air, who invited The South China Morning Post to witness his testing processes. Having launched in 2013 to sell air purifiers, the start-up began testing masks more than four years ago, in an effort to help Beijingers deal with the perpetual smog hanging over the capital. Testing face masks for their ability to filter out coronavirus, then, seemed like a logical step. The company had already been testing a range of household products for their effectiveness, such as DIY face coverings, following recommendations from various governments to use makeshift masks. But the firm’s preliminary results of tests on KN95 respirators, conducted in the makeshift lab in Beijing, present a patchwork picture. Even products that claim to be made in the same factory can show a large difference in quality. At the request of a US buyer, Smart Air tested a sample of a KN95 mask made by a company that previously manufactured display cases. The producer claimed their respirators could, as the name suggests, filter out at least 95 per cent of airborne particles, but tests showed that they only caught 50 per cent. The American buyer was forced to give up plans to sell those masks to hospitals, having ordered about 100,000. Another sample then arrived – claiming to be from the same factory – with a slight design tweak around the ear loops. For the second batch, the particle capturing capability jumped to 90 per cent. “Our concern is that these suppliers may not actually be [from] the factories as they claim to be, but middle men sourcing and then reselling a wide range of masks. This makes traceability and quality control even more difficult,” Robertson said. This is a widely-reported problem among those working in China’s fast-moving medical equipment market, which is brimming with fly-by-night brokers and scurrilous salesmen. Products are often sold at a huge mark-up, with manufacturers or the brokers that claim to represent them often demanding full payment up front. As of last week, the nine-member team of Smart Air in Beijing had received 46 different mask designs claiming to be from 24 factories around China, and had completed tests on 15 types of masks. To test the masks, they use a fan to blow ambient room air from their bedroom-turned-lab into a transparent tube, then place the mask on the other end with a laser particle counter behind it to measure what percentage of roughly coronavirus-sized microparticles are getting through. Results showed that eight out of 15 failed to meet the standards they were advertising, with all suppliers claiming their respirators were capable of filtering out at least 95 per cent of airborne particles. The worst performing mask captured just 18 per cent of particles – a shocking figure considering they are being marketed as hospital-ready goods to countries with desperate shortages of medical supplies. The quality of masks being sold varies greatly. It will be very difficult for consumers to be able to tell which masks meet the standard and which do not Paddy Robertson, Smart Air “The quality of masks being sold varies greatly. It will be very difficult for consumers to be able to tell which masks meet the standard and which do not, potentially leading to increased risk of infection among certain groups, for example, health workers,” Robertson said. The quality of Chinese masks and other medical supplies has also caused a diplomatic storm that has caught the attention of the central government in Beijing. From Canada to India, countries have rejected Chinese medical equipment for failing to meet their standards. Beijing, worried poor quality products would tarnish China’s national image abroad, stepped in to take the steam out of an overheating market. The government introduced quality inspections for every shipment of medical gear to be used to fight Covid-19, even though it slowed down the exports of these supplies when the rest of the world needed them. This bottleneck, Robertson said, underscored the need for independent third-party testing that would give overseas buyers confidence that they were dealing with legitimate suppliers. With more than 30,000 new companies registering to make or trade masks in China since the start of the year, Smart Air’s makeshift testing lab can only really hope to test a fraction. But the volume of correspondence the firm is receiving from worried buyers all over the world illustrates the scale of the problem, in what has become the most bizarre and fevered industrial trend of the year so far.