By Anne Marie Dixon-Heathman, IEST Fellow

As an actively engaged member of the contamination control field for more than 30 years, I am always seeking opportunities to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and safety of cleaning and sanitizing cleanrooms. The previous revisions of IEST RP-CC018 have not included sanitization and have only addressed housekeeping. Our Working Group felt sanitization is an essential need for the users of this document.

As chair of the IEST Working Group that developed IEST-RP-CC018.5, I am excited to share the major changes and improvements to the cleanroom standard:

• An entire section on sanitization.
• New wall cleaning method.
• Techniques that are ergonomically better and safer for the operator, reducing physical stress during cleaning.
• Addition of a pre-saturated mopping system.
• Additional instructions for cleaning cleanroom gown/garment bins.

The members of IEST Working Group CC018 always look to establish techniques that improve the ergonomics in cleaning. Previous revisions have offered alternatives for walls and floors. This revision added a new technique for wall cleaning and sanitization that was faster, more efficient, and could have an ergonomic benefit. IEST RP-CC018 has always performed round-robin testing to support any new technique/method. The additional wall cleaning method was proven as equal to the two existing methods in the recommended practice.

Because of these changes, the committee renamed the document from Cleanroom Housekeeping: Operating and Monitoring Procedures to Cleanroom Cleaning and Sanitization: Operating and Monitoring Procedures.

IEST-RP-CC018.5 is now available for purchase at IEST’s Bookstore. Cleanroom managers and operators working in all types and sizes of cleanrooms across all industries – including aerospace, semiconductor, and pharmaceutical companies – will benefit from the updated guidance.

I will present a webinar on June 1 to review the changes to IEST-RP-CC018 in greater detail. If you want to learn more, I encourage you to sign up: Recent Updates to Cleanroom Cleaning and Sanitizing Recommendations: The New IEST-RP-CC018.5 Virtual Training. Registration closes May 29. This brief webinar will present the changes to the document as well as a review of the round-robin testing that was performed.

Anne Marie Dixon-Heathman, IEST Fellow, is owner and president of Cleanroom Management Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in competitive benchmarking, training, and auditing of clean and aseptic operations and management. She also chairs the United States Technical Advisory Group to ISO Technical Committee 209, Cleanrooms and associated controlled environments.

To order your copy of IEST-RP-CC018.5, please go to the IEST Bookstore: https://www.iest.org/Bookstore