About Us

OCTO® Safety Devices was founded with the singular goal of creating, manufacturing and bringing to market a respirator mask that delivers on the recommendations of the 2009 B.R.E.A.T.H.E. Report.

Until now, these recommendations have been largely ignored, but a small group of innovative thinkers have been working on development of a respirator incorporating these recommendations, with the aim of making it available to prefessionals, and the public at large. After almost eight years OCTO Safety Devices is introducing an advanced, practical and highly-effective respirator mask which sets a new standard for respiratory protection.

The Need for a Better Respirator

After the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic, research showed that 43% of fatalities were healthcare workers. Many of these workers reported that they put themselves at higher risk because they just couldn’t stand wearing uncomfortable, hot respirator masks for long periods of time. The same is true for scores of 9/11 First Responders who fell seriously ill because they either had inferior masks or stopped wearing them due to breathing issues and a lack of comfort.

The shortcomings identified after these two disasters drove our quest to bring to market a respirator that provides pathogen and particulate protection, that can be worn comfortably for many hours, and that can be sanitized, sterilized and reused.

From the CDC website: 
The Better Respiratory Equipment using Advanced Technologies for Healthcare Employees (Project BREATHE) Working Group (WG) was a U.S. Federal government interagency effort, initiated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, whose purpose was to develop a set of consensus recommendations that aim to improve respiratory protective equipment used by healthcare workers (HCWs). With representatives from nine (9) Federal departments and agencies, this multidisciplinary team had a broad range of expertise, including pandemic and emergency preparedness, infectious disease medicine and epidemiology, respirator and personal protective equipment policy and regulation, occupational and environmental medicine, respirator and materials science, infection control, respirator physiology and physics and biosecurity. The WG was co-chaired by staff from the Veterans Administration (VA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This report consists of 28 consensus recommendations for consideration by respirator manufacturers, research organizations, consensus standards development organizations, and respirator users and their employers.

More information about the Project Better Respiratory Equipment Using Advanced Technologies for Healthcare Employees (B.R.E.A.T.H.E.) is available here