Andrew Sedler is the chief operating officer at Burbank Dental Lab. Although the pandemic has forced the lab to reduce its staff from 200 people to 10, it still is treating emergency cases. When the staff isn’t handling such cases, it’s making N95 masks to donate to medical personnel.
Sedler told the Journal he spoke with a Cedars-Sinai Medical Center worker who told him she “was given only one N95 mask for the week. She was crying as she was headed to work telling me this.”
The lab is using 3-D printers and material from Pennsylvania to create both medium and large reusable masks with filters. “This mask is like a pair of glasses, it’s like a pair of shoes,” Sedler said. “You use it until it breaks.”
He added that the masks will not degrade if you use disinfectant on them, and estimates the masks can last up to a year. To date, the lab has produced around 800 masks, which have been donated to myriad hospitals in the Los Angeles area, including Cedars-Sinai and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, as well as a couple of hospitals on the East Coast.
“I want to teach my son what tzedakah is. I want to be a role model to my own son.” — Andrew Sedler
“Any feedback we’ve had has generally been very positive,” Sedler said. “The only negative feedback we had is communicating through the mask. You kind of have to stand next to the person to hear what they’re saying. But other than that, people are saying, ‘Thank you and we’re very comfortable now [in] being able to do our job because you’re not going to inhale the virus.’ ”
Sedler said that he goes into the lab on Saturdays and Sundays to continue the production of the masks. “I want to teach my son what tzedakah is,” he said. “I want to be a role model to my own son.”
