Stay on the safe side: Surface and Personnel Monitoring Solutions

Merck Millipore’s (Germany) complete portfolio of reliable, convenient and flexible environmental monitoring products enables pharmaceutical companies to keep production plants clean and minimise the risk of contamination.

The product portfolio encompasses a wide range of swabs and contact plates adapted to cleanroom requirements and different surface types. For highly critical areas, such as cleanrooms (ISO 5) or isolators, Merck Millipore provides triple-sleeved, gamma-irradiated ICR and ICRplus contact plates and slides. These are ideally complemented by ICR Swabs for difficult-to-access locations like tubing or filling needles. The reliable choice for less critical environments is single-bagged, non-irradiated RT and RTplus contact plates and slides. Since every country has its own standards, the available surface and personnel monitoring solutions have been designed to meet them all –making sure that end products are safe, wherever around the globe these may have been produced.

The versatile ICR Contact Plates, available in a variety of formulations for the monitoring of sanitised, dry surfaces in isolators and critical cleanrooms, are gamma-irradiated in their final packaging to minimise the risk of contamination. Their transparent, H2O2-impermeable triple-sleeve packaging ensures safe transportation in cleanrooms (ISO 5) and isolators. Each plate contains a data matrix barcode for paperless and reliable identification. The plates are supplemented by neutralisers for a wide range of disinfectants. ICRplus Contact Plates offer all the above features and benefits, plus CLOSED and VENT closure for safe transportation and flexible incubation conditions.

ICR Swabs for isolators and critical cleanrooms are suitable for presence/absence testing of difficult-to-access, dry surfaces such as filling needles and tubes. These gamma-irradiated swabs are opened only once for sampling. All subsequent steps, such as adding the broth, incubation, and detection of turbidity, are performed in the closed system. Their H2O2-impermeable inner packaging protects the medium from VHP vapour during decontamination of isolators.

The flexible HYCON Contact Slides are universal tools for flat and curved surfaces in aseptic environments and isolators and provide a standardised contact area of 25 cm2. A range of formulations is available, including total count media and selective media for yeasts and molds, coliform organisms and Staphylococci.