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Comment by nacho2sweet | Hacker News Reader

Going to be hard to make those 3M masks when all the pulp used to make them is produced in Canada and we stop selling it to you cause you won't sell us masks.

https://www.vancouverislandfreedaily.com/business/nanaimos-h...

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Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewars. Last thing we need here.

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The US has ten times the population and ten times the economy. Canada would have ten times the pain if it decided to get into an economic war with the US and would still not get the masks it wants. The US however does have plenty of pulp production that can be diverted into whatever use is most important at the moment.

This should be a wake up call to Canada to stop being so dependent on exporting commodities. It's been this way for my entire life and has been a constant complaint in Canadian economic circles but for some reason Canada doesn't seem to want to diversify. Maybe this will change that attitude.

I don't know that this would be the case.

Pulp production is not a nameless commodity, it needs to be up to a certain spec for surgical masks, for example. Canada is the supplier for a great many US companies. Sure, the US could try to produce that speficic spec, but it would not be easy and would take precious weeks that the US cannot spare. If it could, production would just increase for respirators, but this has to be done instead because it takes too much time. And in that time, Canada will likely be able to set up production for the masks, actually. If I remember correctly 3M Canada does make filter media, so the expertise is there. It isn't rocket science either, it just takes time.

In a full scale economic war between the US and Canda, at least all Canadians will still have water and electricity.

I'm pretty sure there's no pulp in the N95 respirators.

I'm ill informed, do you have a source? Is it cotton or polymer?

Here's the document on the 3M N95 8210 which is a common N95 mask: https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1425070O/3m-particulate-...

• Straps – Thermoplastic Elastomer

• Nose Clip – Aluminum

• Nose foam - Polyurethane

• Filter – Polypropylene

• Shell – Polyester

• Coverweb - Polyester

Here's the datasheet for the 3M 1860 N95 Surgical Respirator (for hospital and medical use): https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1538979O/3m-disposable-r...

* Straps: Braided Polyisoprene

* Staples: Steel

* Nose Clip: Aluminium

* Nose Foam: Polyurethane Foam

* Filter: Polypropylene/Polyester

* Shell: Polypropylene

* Coverweb: Polypropylene

Here's another document from Honeywell stating the main material is "flexible non-woven polypropylene fabric" https://www.honeywell.com/en-us/newsroom/news/2020/03/n95-ma...

Here's the link to Wikipedia and I quote "The N95 mask requires a fine mesh of synthetic polymer fibers, also known as nonwoven polypropylene fabric,[5] which is produced through a highly specialized process called melt blowing that forms the inner filtration layer that filters out hazardous particles.[6]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N95_mask

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