[1][2] The maintenance of personal diving equipment includes cleaning and inspection after use, repair or servicing when necessary or scheduled, and appropriate storage.
Some highly effective methods for disinfection can damage the equipment, or cause accelerated degradation of components due to incompatibility with materials.
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19 disease is considered easier to kill than the closely related SARS-CoV-1, so in the absence of specific test results for SARS-CoV-2, methods for disinfection of SARS-CoV-1 are assumed to be effective.
(Duan et al 2003 in DANSA 2020)[7] Divers Alert Network has estimated that a breathing air compressor in a 27 °C (81 °F) environment, would have an inter-stage temperature inside the cylinder of about 107 °C (225 °F).
In reality the compressed air is cooled between stages, and the compressor itself is fairly hot, so direct measurement would be relatively simple, but this does not take into account time of exposure to temperature.
Infected droplets exhaled by a person can be as small as 0.5 micron, so the compressor particle filter systems would not reliably remove them.
[7] Sodium hypochlorite bleach is a strong oxidant which has been tested in different concentrations, and is proven to be effective against viruses by damaging the viral genome.
Specific studies on SARS-CoV-2 found that a sodium hypochlorite bleach concentration of 0.1% (1,000 ppm) was necessary to adequately reduce infectivity when sprayed onto a non-porous surface, and that it would inactivate the virus within 1 minute.
[9] Commercial diving operations are often required for maintenance and repair work in water known to have high counts of E. coli and other pathogens.
For example, the National Park Service requires certification of heat and chemical disinfection followed by a prolonged 30-day drying before entering Devils Hole.