The inventor of fart pants hopes to use the technology to fight the coronavirus.
Paul O’Leary is working on a mask using the same fart filtering carbon material that goes into his Shreddies line of underwear.
This week the Loughborough entrepreneur was in the news for coming up with a banana shaped filter people suffering from flatulence can pop in the back of their pants to filter out the smell of farts on plane journeys.
Today Paul said if he comes up with the right design, the machinists working on his Shreddies products could move straight over to producing the new mask.
The total number of coronavirus cases in the 海角视频 reached 15 on Thursday, after the Department of Health confirmed two more cases.
The virus was passed on in Italy and Tenerife, and the people affected were transferred to specialists in Liverpool and London.
British guests have been quarantined at a hotel in Tenerife, while Italy has more than 400 reported cases, with 12 fatalities.
Latest figures show more than 80,000 people in more than 40 countries have been infected.
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Paul – who is a successful kitchen designer by trade – initially wanted to make an anti-coronavirus snood for his son to wear as a mask on a skiing trip to Italy.
The trip was cancelled because of the outbreak over there.
Paul said he had now found that the thickness of the material made it too bulky for a snood, so has moved onto designing more traditional protection.
Paul said: “Everyone is talking about how many people are wearing masks and how hard they are to come by.
“A lot of people are very worried about this in the 海角视频.
“I could bring in new people to up production if I needed – and the plan is to make as many as we can, once we come up with the best design.”
He said the carbon material that goes into his pants, jeans and pyjamas – initially designed to filter out the fart whiffs – had already been tested at the Government’s Porton Down military facility in Wiltshire for potential use in NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) suits.
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That is still a work in progress, but he thinks making masks in the meantime could end up being a potential lifesaver.
The small team of machinists at his base in Cotes Mill, near Loughborough, make around 60,000 pairs of fart pants a year.
If the masks go into production he could double the size of the team within a matter of days, and could even outsource production.
He said: “The paper masks people are wearing don’t fit that well.
“The better masks are designed for stopping dust and the full-on hasmat gas masks are not easy to wear.
“We have patented an NBC suit and the same fabric will stop the virus.
“We won’t be making any claims about the design, but what we can do is make sure it is really well designed, with something you can pinch around your nose and cheeks.
“It could be designed here within a week.
“I think there will be a vaccine by next winter, and if we can slow it down it will make a huge difference.
“That’s why the authorities are going to such great efforts – it’s a race against time.
“It’s still early stages but we are already making mask samples.
“Everyone is concerned. We manufacture kitchens, and even we are concerned that accessories made in China are being affected.
“We have eight people in Shreddies all together and we know we can find more people and can hire more machines, so could probably double that number.”