Surrey company gets federal approvals for medical grade respirator masks

BY PAMELA FAYERMAN

A B.C. medical mask company has received Health Canada and other quality standard approvals for its locally manufactured, four-layer masks.

The ECAN95 mask by Eternity Medical Equipment is the Canadian equivalent to the more commonly known N95 mask, an American designationl. This is reportedly the first Canadian-made respirator mask to gain such approvals by the federal government.

Jeffrey Wang, co-founder of Eternity, which opened three months ago in Surrey, said today:

“We are proud of our masks and pleased that our ECAN95 is the first Canadian-made mask to receive official CSA (Canadian Standards Association) certification. We started this journey back in April, and to know our masks are now being used across British Columbia and the country to help fight the pandemic is very humbling to us.”

The B.C. government has purchased over eight million medical masks for hospitals and healthcare staff from various producers since the pandemic began and now it has a local source. Although the fabric materials are imported, the masks are manufactured and assembled in Surrey and a surprising amount of the stitch work is done by hand.

Premier John Horgan praised the company in this message a few months ago:

Tested at the CSA laboratory in Toronto, the masks manufactured by Eternity were found to comply with required tight fit specifications, airflow resistance and filtering efficiency.

In a statement, Dana Parmenter, Vice President, Industrial, CSA Group, said:

“We are pleased to have certified this new product. Certification demonstrates that the tested PPE samples meet critical safety standards, and the manufacturer must maintain these standards throughout ongoing production. CSA Group is proud to be the first Canadian provider of testing, inspection and certification services for medical-grade PPE intended for use across Canada.”

As reported here, Eternity was one of the first companies in British Columbia to set up a production facility for masks in a sanitary plant with air showers at entrances, a dedicated filtration and exhaust system and air-conditioning purification. The company says it has the capacity to make up to 2.5 million masks a month at full capacity.