KITCHENER -- Another local company has scaled back production on respirators because they have products sitting in storage while they wait for certification.

"We are sitting on tens of thousands of respirators that we really want to desperately get out to people," O2 Industries CEO Richard Szasz said.

The Kitchener-based company has donated 5,000 respirators to front-line health-care workers.

"That's in an effort to really try to help, because they aren't allowed to buy the product through procurement at work," Szasz said.

The company is waiting for certification to be able to sell the respirators as medical devices. Szasz said they applied to Health Canada and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) a year ago.

"We are estimating to be somewhere within the top 50 at NIOSH, out of about 900 applications," he said.

“Health Canada reviews all COVID-19-related submissions and applications as quickly as possible without compromising patient safety," a statement from Health Canada said in part.

Szasz said the product represents about one per cent of their stock worldwide. The rest is stored in warehouses around the world.

"It's frustrating and we are having to put the brakes on, even though we have good products that can really help people," he said. "We haven't been able to lock in things like the health-care industry or LTC health care. They are looking at the standards very black and white. It's 'We need N95 or we can't talk to you.'"

Ravi Selvaganapathy, director of the Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment at McMaster University, said there needs to be a Canadian certification body.

"The Canadian Standards Association is leading that charge and they are drafting a formulation," he said. "They are also working with NIOSH to come up with some common standards that can be validated on both sides of the border."

O2 Industries plans to slow production and refocus on making a respirator that won't need certification.