Potential Cleanroom Validation Hazards


Potential Cleanroom Validation Hazards

There are many potential hazards in clean rooms, so maintaining the health and safety and adhering to the high standards of a controlled cleanroom environment requires thorough training and routine testing and inspections. Maintaining safety standards scan be quite a challenge as the unpredictability of things that can go wrong and ultimately contaminate a cleanroom are quite extensive.


Some common examples cleanroom hazards include:

  1. Holes in the HEPA Filters - Sometimes employees accidently damage HEPA filters by lifting mop handles to high and hitting the underside of the HEPA filters.
  2. Electrical Outlets – check that your electrical outlets are properly sealed.  Sometimes, small insects can crawl through outlets as well as airborne duct and contaminates.
  3. Mechanical Pipe Runs - check that your pipes etc. are properly sealed where they terminate through the room/building envelope.
  4. Double Doors - when you’re designing and building your cleanroom, do you have a double door installed? You should have a double door to bring things in and out, yes, even during the building process to bring equipment in and out of the area.
  5. Rubber Coving to Walls and Floors – where different finishes have been bonded together, i.e. walls and floors, ensure that the rubber bonding strip has not begun to de-bond from the finishing’s, this can lead to air leakage paths and also allow dust and other contaminates into the clean room environment.
  6. Electrical Trunking – ensure all electrical trunking is completely sealed where it terminates through the room/building envelope.
  7. Pass Through Areas - do you have to bring a lot of equipment and parts into the cleanroom? If so products and supplies can go through the pass through in the form of a wall mounted or floor mounted cart pass through.
  8. Flooring - what type of flooring has been installed within your cleanroom? If the floor is vinyl it is not an ESD floor. All equipment must be able to be properly grounded to the floor when you’re using ESD chairs, carts, chairs etc.  
  9. Communication Devices - if you need your mobile phone and/or walkie-talkies in the cleanroom for communication purposes, it should not be clipped on the outside of your coveralls. They may fall off and damage microchips etc. in all instances if you do need communication devices you can wear small cleanroom waist bag etc. which reduce the risk of damage to your surrounding area.
APT Sound Testing can undertake all your cleanroom testing requirements to ISO 14644-1:2015 - Classification of air cleanliness by particle concentration and ISO 14644-2:2015 - Monitoring to provide evidence of cleanroom performance related to air cleanliness by particle concentration.

We provide a friendly professional cleanroom validation service to the requirements of all current ISO standards and guidelines. We will issue you with test certificates containing up-to-date calibration certificates for all of the equipment used as well as recommendations for improvements that could be made to make the clean room more efficient in regards to its operation.

For more information visit our website at www.aptsoundtesting.co.uk or call us on 01525 303905 to discuss your annual cleanroom validation testing, alternately please email info@aptsoundtesting.co.uk

Location: Clapham Town, London SW4 0QU, UK

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