Tag Archives: Pharmaceutical

Contact Transfer Revisited

red toast jelly floor

Your toast lands jelly side down on the floor.  Could there be a more dramatic example of the contact transfer phenomenon described in “Particles on Surfaces 103”?  You have no difficulty seeing the transfer of jelly to the floor and you can easily imagine that there is a simultaneous transfer of floor bacteria onto the [Read More…]

How The Promise of Stem Cell Therapy Can Blind Us to its Danger

stem cell therapy

In the Worlds Fair Exposition of 1893, one young entrepreneur, Clark Stanley, stood before an excited crowd of onlookers and plunged his hand into a sack of live rattlesnakes. Pulling out an unfortunate herpetological victim, he sliced it open and, in a technique that was about as far from aseptic processing and devoid of microbial [Read More…]

Endotoxins: A Danger to Pharmaceutical & Medical Device Manufacturing Industries

Bacteria low endo

Introduction Pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing personnel must cope with endotoxins – a contamination source unique to their industries.  Endotoxins, also known as pyrogens, originate from dead (!) gram negative bacteria. When this strain of bacteria are killed by antibacterial reagents (say phenolic or quaternary ammonium compounds), radiation, steam sterilization, etc. the cell wall detritus [Read More…]

Welcome to the New Dawn of Cloning

Reproduction used to be simple. Boy meets girl. Egg meets sperm. Nine months, one baby shower, and a whole lot of trips to Buy Buy Baby later, a new addition arrives to much billing and cooing by the proud grandparents. Oh those halcyon days. Today, the landscape is so much more nuanced as advances in [Read More…]

Ancient and Futuristic – What is the Role of the Cleanroom in Advanced Sericulture?

Silk Cocoons with Worm

We have a riddle for you: what is both ancient and futuristic, biodegradable and naturally sustainable, is delicately engineered in a cleanroom with a tensile strength five times that of steel, is a simple formulation but has applications in materials science, medicine, and reforestation? Need some more clues? It is edible, reintegrating into the human [Read More…]

Disinfection of Cleanroom Surfaces With Hydrogen Peroxide

Disinfection of Surfaces with Hydrogen Peroxide

Disinfection of Surfaces with Hydrogen Peroxide Of all the contamination control activities in a cleanroom, perhaps the most critical are disinfection procedures. That’s because human health depends on the quality and thoroughness of a surface disinfection wipedown. Many solutions can be considered for surface disinfection, but hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite (bleach) rate special attention. [Read More…]

Disinfection of Cleanroom Surfaces With Bleach

Disinfection-Surfaces-With-Bleach-_1_

A previous article in this series discussed disinfection of surfaces with hydrogen peroxide.  We turn our attention now to bleach as another very effective treatment agent. Most people understand that ordinary household bleach – a 5.5% solution of sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) in water – is a strong disinfecting agent.  In neutral or slightly acidic solutions the active [Read More…]

How Do You Clean A Laminar Flow Hood?

laminar flow hood cleaning

The EasyClean® 360 is the most efficient way to clean a laminar flow hood. It’s unique triangular shaped head allows it to clean the difficult tight corners in the hood.  The tool is delivered with two handles, a 14” (35cm) and 24” (61cm).  There is also another ordering option for a telescoping handle that will extend from 35 [Read More…]

Cleanroom Paper vs. Standard Copy Paper

cleanroom paper BCR bond

  BCR® Bond 850 100% wood pulp, synthetic latex binder Helmke Drum (particles/ft3) : 68 Na+ : 100ppm K+ : 1.7ppm Ca++ : 0.56ppm Mg++ : 0.13ppm Cl : 44ppm Standard Copy Paper 100 % wood pulp Helmke Drum (particles/ ft3) : 7200 Na+ : 1500ppm K+ : 12ppm Ca++ : 180ppm Mg++ : 61ppm Cl : 2000ppm   68ppm Vs. 7200ppm! IEST – [Read More…]

Silicone Contamination and the FDA

doctor beautician increases lip patient an injection syringe Spa

Opening soon in theaters across the nation, the movie Wonder, adapted from the eponymous bestseller by R. J. Palacio, is already the subject of intense controversy. The story centers on the character of August Pullman – ‘Auggie’ to his friends – a ten year old boy, about to start school. And Auggie is no ‘normal’ [Read More…]