Get Clean Room Procedures Done Right

How to Get Clean Room Procedures Performed Correctly

Cleanrooms provide a controlled environment for sensitive scientific research and manufacturing processes to take place. They are designed in a way to minimize the introduction, generation, and retention of particles inside the room. It requires an incredible amount of technology to create and maintain such levels of cleanliness. Cleanrooms have air filtration systems that completely change the air several times per minute and reduce the chances of harmful airborne particles getting into products.
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Proper cleanroom gowning and cleaning procedures are needed to ensure consistent cleanliness and contamination control. While procedures vary depending on the cleanroom classification and application, there are general basics that can help in keeping the environment clean. This guide will look at the cleanroom procedures for reaching and maintaining cleanliness.

Cleanroom Gowning Procedure

Human beings are the largest sources of contaminants in cleanrooms. The body naturally hosts unwanted bacteria besides shedding the skin cells and hair and exhaling bio-organisms. This is why it’s important for cleanroom personnel to wear the required cleanroom apparel depending on the cleanroom’s classification.

Gowning procedures start right at home by observing personal cleanliness such as bathing, brushing the teeth, trimming the hair, and applying non-silicone moisturizers to reduce flakes on the skin. Cleanroom personnel should keep off hair gels and sprays, aromatic aftershaves, perfumes, and certain types of body lotions as they aren’t cleanroom compatible. Employees with access to cleanrooms should also wash their hands before going in and apply cleanroom-compatible hand creams before gowning.

Here’s the donning sequence for cleanroom access:

• Wash and dry hands
• Enter the non-sterile gowning area
• People with facial hair should put on bouffants
• Remove excess soil from the shoes on the tack mat
• Wear disposable shoe covers
• Put on your donning gloves and walk to the gowning area
• Don your hood while only touching the inside of the hood
• Fit the hood snugly and cover the bouffant completely before putting on a facemask
• Put on the coverall without it touching the walls or floor
• Don boots
• Don your eye shields and gloves (over the coverall sleeves)
• Walk over the cleanroom tack mat before entering the cleanroom to avoid contamination

Doffing sequence:
Reverse the procedure above and place all the disposable items in the trash. For aseptic pharmaceutical cleanrooms, all garments should be discarded on exit and a new set used on reentry. Reusable hoods, boots, and coveralls should be placed in the proper receptacle while goggles or eye shields placed in another.

Personnel can leave the cleanroom without doffing the garments during emergency evacuations.
It’s important to remember never to touch any exposed part of the body with a gloved hand. You should also never use powder gloves in a cleanroom or allow the garments to touch the floor.

Cleanroom Cleaning Procedure

The cleanliness of a cleanroom doesn’t end with the disposal of used gowns and garments upon exit. The cleanroom itself has to be cleaned. Here are the guidelines for cleanroom cleaning:

• Only specified cleaning agents should be used in cleaning the cleanroom. Keep off general non-cleanroom cleaning agents.
• Surfaces such as benches, cleanroom walls, and floors should be scrubbed using deionized water.
• Avoid using rags, scrubs, and powders to clean cleanrooms. Instead, use cleanroom mops made from woven polyester that don’t tear up or shed during cleaning.
• Use designated water control, deep-drawn seamless buckets, and an autoclave-ready multi-bucket mopping system that has non-marring wheels.
• Use distilled water to damp mop the cleanroom floors daily before the normal work shifts begin then vacuum-dry the floors.
• Damp-mop the floors weekly using distilled water, a cleanroom detergent, and a HEPA filter vacuum.
• Ensure that you vacuum the walls on a daily basis.
• Use distilled water and a damp cleanroom sponge to wipe the walls before vacuum drying each week.
• Wash and wipe dry the cleanroom pass-throughs and windows every day using 70% IPA wipes. The wipes should be lint-free.
• Ensure that you vacuum the ceilings on a daily basis.
• Use distilled water and a damp sponge to wipe the ceilings each week before vacuum drying.
• Whenever necessary, use distilled water and detergent to wash the ceilings in order to remove deposits. Sometimes deposits are formed depending on the application of the cleanroom.
• Besides the floors, all the other daily cleaning tasks should be carried out during the normal work shifts.
• Use distilled water and a damp sponge to wipe overhand light lenses and troffers before vacuum drying.
• Always change the cleanroom sticky mats whenever necessary.

Not all cleanrooms use the procedures listed for their gowning and cleaning guidelines. As mentioned, that depends on the classification of the cleanroom and its application. This guide is only intended to give you an idea of how to keep your cleanroom from getting contaminated and help you get started. These are simple tasks but their benefits to the maintenance of cleanroom standards are significant and compounding.