Whirlpool designs respirators for local healthcare facilities

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ST. JOSEPH, Mich. -- After donating thousands of masks, gloves, and other PPE to local health care facilities in April, Whirlpool is now making medical equipment.

Following their donation last month, Whirlpool partnered with Spectrum Health Lakeland after learning they needed ventilators and respirators to treat COVID-19 patients. On Thursday, they made their first delivery of 500 respirators to Lakeland Hospital.

In just seven weeks, Whirlpool designed, manufactured and assembled “powered-air-purifier respirators” — or PAPR – which take the place of traditional medical masks.
The hoods are disposable, so health care workers no longer have to re-use face shields with multiple patients.
“This is what’s different about our unit. First of all, we tried to make it cost effective so we could distribute it to many people, and then secondly the hood is disposable so when the clinicians go into the hot environments with the COVID virus they can come out of that and literally take the hood off, dispose of that, and then next time when they go and see a different patient they can put a clean hood on and go and see that patient without a risk of cross-infection,” said Christian Gianni, VP of technology at Whirlpool.
Whirlpool got help from Reynolds Consumer Product with providing the hoods and Dow Chemical provided the thermo-plastic.

If you’re a healthcare provider interested in purchasing these units, all you have to do is contact Whirlpool.

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