Case Study: Decontamination of Tented Equipment or Area

Food production facilities are facing greater scrutiny from both the public and the government to provide safe foods. Advances in environmental monitoring and microbial sampling have brought to light the shortcomings of the food industry’s sanitation methods. While there are many reasons for recurring contamination by a persistent pathogen, insufficient cleaning and decontamination is the most common. ClorDiSys Decontamination Services can be utilized for a variety of applications within the food industry from tented pieces of equipment up to entire facilities. Tenting an area is an application that we’re seeing more of lately, especially in facilities that have more of an open design and floor plan.

One example of this application is when our service team decontaminated a confectionery facility’s roaster. The roaster had caught fire and was extinguished by the fire department.  Worried the water used to put out the fire contained organisms which could contaminate their production line, this company wanted to clean the equipment before production started again.  Some of the equipment’s interior was not easily accessible for the in-house sanitation team, so once the majority of cocoa powder was removed, the company opted to decontaminate with chlorine dioxide gas. That equipment was tented and fumigated, as the rest of the room was not deemed a concern. The setup and decontamination of the roughly 8,000 ft3 space took place in 1 day and successfully provided a 6-log sporicidal reduction of all surfaces within the equipment.

ClorDiSys’ Decontamination Services can be arranged for contamination response or preventive control needs. Visit our team at booth #609 at the IAFP Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City July 8-11th to learn more!

Case Study: Used Equipment Decontamination

Our Decontamination Service Team recently completed a decontamination of a used bacon slicing line for a food company.  Because it was a used piece of equipment, the company did not want to bring it into the facility without being decontaminated first. This was not only to preserve the current sterility of their production area, but also to ensure safe food production once the line was in use. The slicing line was placed within a trailer which provided a sealed chamber for safe decontamination. 10 biological indicators were placed within the trailer and equipment in order to show that a 6-log reduction had been achieved. Once the trailer was sealed, the decontamination started.  The entire setup and decontamination took 4 hours from start to finish, when it was safe to open the trailer and bring the equipment into the production area. All biological indicators came back negative for growth verifying that the decontamination was successful. Production was able to start on the bacon slicing line shortly after being installed within the production area, and the company has been safely producing food since.

Contaminated piece of equipment in your facility? Call ClorDiSys at (908) 236-4100 or email the Decontamination Service Team at service@clordisys.com.

Continuous vs. Pulsed UV-C

Not all ultraviolet disinfection is alike. In fact, not all ultraviolet light is alike. Ultraviolet light is divided into UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C rays. It is the wavelengths in the UV-C spectrum which offer the greatest germicidal potential. Some UV disinfection systems, like xenon pulse UV, use the full spectrum of ultraviolet light to disperse germ-killing energy. It is claimed that the xenon pulse is a more effective way to kill harmful bacteria because of its similarities to punching a wall, more punches will weaken it better than one. However, light is not a fist. It is a form of energy, and continual energy is more effective than turning it on and turning it off. Additionally, bulbs generating UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C wavelengths are inherently less effective in disinfection than continuous UV-C.

The US Veterans Administration commissioned an infection prevention research team led by Curtis Donskey, M.D., to conduct an independent study of continuous ultraviolet disinfection versus xenon pulse UV disinfection. The study tested a continuous UV-C robot which was run for the same length of time from the same point in the room as a pulsed xenon (PU-UV) unit.  The results showed surprisingly low pathogen kill rates for the pulsed xenon device, about .5 log for both C.diff and VRE, even as close as 4 feet.  The continuous UV-C robot demonstrated a much higher CFU reduction for the pathogens C. difficile, MRSA and VRE.  The study states, “PX-UV was less effective than continuous UV-C in reducing pathogen recovery on glass slides with a 10-minute exposure time in similar hospital rooms” and “the UV-C device achieved significantly greater log10 CFU reductions than the PX-UV device”. Not only did the continuous UV-C robot in the study show much stronger disinfectant results, but that it was not run for its entire cycle time. The study calls attention to the dangers of bold claims and trying to complete a disinfectant procedure too quickly.

Chart from VA Donskey study: Study results showing log reductions achieved by a UV-C and pulsed xenon devices
when run for the same time (10 min.) at the same distance from glass microscope slides (4 ft).
(PRNewsFoto/Infection Prevention Technologies)

To read more on the comparison of these two technologies, click here.