Health and Safety Industry

It’s a challenge to make a filter media that maximizes airflow but also blocks enough airborne particles to meet NIOSH standards. We started with the world’s best melt blown filter media equipment – from Germany’s Reifenhäuser REICOFIL GmbH & Co – and engineered it to produce the optimal balance of fiber size, thickness, weight, and proprietary static charge to meet this challenge.

The result is Shawmut MB™, a filter media other mask manufacturers are coming to us for due to its high filtration properties, low air resistance, and light weight. 

The global pandemic of 2020 highlighted several concerns about putting nearly the majority of our critical safety products in the hands of a distant overseas supply chain. According to HHS, 70% of respirators used in the U.S. at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak were made overseas, and China was the source of 50% of the world’s N95 respirators. 

Supply chain issues have demanded that many manufactures look at reshoring or near-shoring suppliers and raw materials sources over the past few years. Shawmut makes PPE in the US and North America.

Our supply chain does not cross any international borders as our raw materials are sourced on shore. Our supply chain is not subject to trade embargoes. This results in consistent quality and performance, much shorter lead times and quick turnaround.

At the interface of man and machine, technical textiles can be the buffer between hard and non-breathable surfaces and the soft skin and tissue of the human body. For example, a metal knee brace is needed to stabilize that critical joint for mobility, but we can’t put hard metal right up against our skin and tissue without a cushion in between, oftentimes a laminate. This laminate needs to be soft and breathable enough to protect the skin on one side, but durable enough on the other to adhere to the metal brace without ripping, shredding or delaminating, while offering a cushion in the middle to avoid hard shocks to the knee joint and leg area.

A similar challenge exists for medical inflatables like DVT prevention cuffs, lymphedema wraps and blood pressure cuffs. The side facing the skin needs to soft and breathable for optimum skin care, but the other layers must withstand the repetitive cycles of air pressure distorting the inflatable bladder the fabric is laminated to.

Shawmut has excelled at technical lamination challenges such as these for decades as a proven supplier to the top manufacturers in the medical device field.