The excubator is a concept of personal protective equipment that attempts to overcome the difficulties of hazmat suits, invented by FluSCIM Lucas Gonzalez in connection with a hazmat suit idea contest in view of the obvious limitations of hazmat suits (detail).
It consists of a cardboard box that fits a person standing upright, with visor and gloves on the front, with entrance through the back door, and with interior handles to lift it and be able to walk with it. In addition:
- Ventilation pipes may be located on the roof or on one side.
- The floor may include Velcro straps to secure the user's shoes.
- On the front there may be a "marsupial pouch" under the visor.
- The viewfinder can be folded down to give better downward visibility.
- On the outside they can hang clamps that would allow to pick up things from the floor.
- Inside there could be a light folding chair for resting.
- It could include a fan to increase comfort in hot places, interior light for reading, place to hang a cell phone, water and food, etc.
Videos[edit | edit source]
Move them from @lucasgonzalez's channel to @fluscim's.
Subtitling, translation, voice-over.
Advantages[edit | edit source]
Cardboard is cheap and there are already factories that produce boxes of this size.
Theoretically, it would be possible to greatly expand production quickly. This theory needs to be tested.
Disadvantages[edit | edit source]
It is not clear that it is safe. That is the main limitation: that it has never been tested.
It is unclear how it would be cleaned between uses.
Improvements[edit | edit source]
Perhaps it could have a washable plastic cover, over the basic cardboard structure, with a watertight zipper or Velcro. That would increase the cost but maybe not much, if you can use the same box more times.
References[edit | edit source]
- Excubator with the original idea. Search link to the first tweet of @lucasgonzalez, of September 26, 2014. Bring the text of the hazmat competitions on Ebola.
- Telegram group (search link).
- AfroEpiWoman (see address on twitter, and look for reference to a similar independent implementation, which turned out to be heavy because the materials were transparent plastic or crystal.).
- http://appropedia.org/PandemicOSAT
