Wipes are an essential cleaning tool for use in the pharmaceutical cleanroom. Karen Rossington, marketing consultant for Contec, looks at the wipe options and some recent performance studies.
Cleanrooms and other controlled environments require stringent control of particles, residues and micro-organisms to ensure desired product or process outcomes. The control of these critical parameters is very often achieved by the use of wipes, either dry or pre-saturated. Various studies have shown that wiping is a very effective way to control contamination on a hard surface. Initial work carried out by I F Stowers and H G Patton in 1978 looked at seven different surface cleaning techniques for removing contaminants from optical surfaces and concluded that wiping with a saturated lens tissue was the most effective particle removal process.1
Other methods of cleaning include dry wiping, compressed air blowing, vacuuming, tack rollers or irrigating with large volumes of solvent. Vacuuming may have a place for the removal of large, visible contamination and cleanroom vacuum cleaners with HEPA filtered exhausts are available. The use of compressed gas to blow particles may remove some particles but are they being physically removed from the cleanroom?
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