SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Pacific Southwest regional office announced Thursday that it has transferred more than 1,100 N-95 face masks to the California Office of Emergency Services as it assesses its supply of personal protective equipment in hopes of donating additional PPE to state and local agencies battling COVID-19. The Agency maintains a range of PPE for mission-critical work such as responding to emergencies, including chemical, oil, radiological and biological incidents.

“EPA is working hard to support our nation’s first responders as they risk their own safety to save lives during the coronavirus pandemic,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “After searching our inventory of personal protective equipment, we identified excess supplies and sent them to those on the frontlines of this fight. At EPA we are here to help in any way we can and I encourage everyone else to do the same.”

“We are doing all we can to support our state and local partners as they address this pandemic in our communities,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator John Busterud. “We don’t maintain large supplies, but we want to ensure that anything we can spare goes to the frontline responders who need it the most.”

EPA maintains a supply of personal protective equipment as part of the Agency’s laboratory, inspection and emergency response functions. EPA also provides additional response assistance when state and local first responder capabilities have been exhausted or when additional support is requested.

EPA is currently developing an Agency-wide plan for rapid distribution of available personal protective equipment to state and local governments that are working COVID-19 operations.

For information about EPA’s involvement with the COVID-19 response, please visit: https://www.epa.gov/coronavirus.