What is a cleanroom?

A cleanroom is an important part of the manufacturing process in various industries, including medical and aerospace. It is an environment that is carefully controlled and kept clean from pollutants such as such as dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles, and chemical vapors. Cleanrooms require a controlled level of contamination specified by the number of particles per cubic meter. Cleanrooms are important to the industries they are used in because devices produced there are highly-regulated and must insure that proper measures are met in their creation.

Because of the high control and regulation surrounding these devices, it is extremely important that the cleanroom is kept at or below the allotted level of contamination. This level can vary across industry and the specific use of the room. Cleanrooms can also vary in size. Some regulations require the entire facility a part is manufactured in be a cleanroom, while others can be just a separate space within the manufacturing facility.

There are also manufacturing facilities that advertise “near cleanroom environments” or “cleanroom level environments.” This means that the plant doesn’t have cleanroom required documentation or testing to make their space an official cleanroom, but they operate at the cleanroom level. These spaces can work for manufacturing materials or devices that need to be kept as contaminant-free as possible, but don’t necessarily require a cleanroom regulation to go to market.

Any facility operating as a cleanroom, or even a cleanroom level environment, will want to make sure their janitorial service is aware of which spaces need to be held to this regulation. They will also want to make sure the commercial cleaning company they hire understands the regulations of a cleanroom and is capable of cleaning to that degree so that they pass their testing.

The same strict protocol and methods it took to build the cleanroom, must be maintained and cleaned to the same high standards. Some commonly known contaminants that are known to cause problems in cleanrooms are generated from these five basic sources: facilities, people, tools, fluids and the product being manufactured. Your cleaning company should be aware of those factors and understand the importance of contamination control and how to properly reduce the risk of contamination in controlled environments.