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How to ensure airtight cleanrooms and isolation rooms

How to ensure airtight cleanrooms and isolation rooms

Here are 5 things you should be looking for

Is your facility housing the development of pharmaceuticals, or is it a center for the combat against infectious viruses? In any case, you need to secure complete airtightness and a very high safety level. 

It is a challenge to design and create cleanrooms, biocontainment rooms, laboratories and isolation rooms in hospitals. Here are five good pieces of advice for cleanroom managers and others who are responsible for such sensitive operations. The information is based on the ISO 14644-14 guidance. 

1. Select the right materials 

The equipment material types need to be smooth, cleanable and have low particle emission. Use stainless steel in place of plated or oxide-coated steel to avoid passive particle generation, and always avoid paints.

2. Ensure low electrostatic properties 

The material should have low electrostatic properties to prevent airborne particles and microorganisms from binding onto the surface of equipment. Equipment with a different charge to airborne particles leads to the potential for particles binding through electrostatic attraction, and this presents a risk factor to gravitational, aerodynamic or adhesion forces. 

3. Simplify cleaning

Where primary packaging materials, intermediate or bulk products are exposed to the environment, interior walls, floors and ceilings should be smooth and free from cracks or open joints. They must not shed particulate matter, but on the other hand permit easy, effective cleaning and disinfection. 

4. Design without recesses

Design pipe work, light fittings, ventilation points and other services without creating recesses. Recesses are difficult to clean and maintain. If there must be any at all, they should be accessible from outside the manufacturing areas.

5. Seal cable and pipe penetrations 

Cable and pipe penetrations are a common leak path that can decrease positive and negative pressure performance.  Cable and pipe penetrations should be sealed to mitigate air-loss and ensure positive and negative pressure room validation.  

Do you want to learn more about cable and pipe seals for labs and cleanrooms? Continue reading.