Environment monitoring

Air particle counting is a very important indicator in high-risk food production and clean room monitoring programs. Particle measurement information is needed to assess air quality in controlled rooms, such as food or pharmaceutical production, which must comply with ISO 14644, GMP and EU Annex 1 requirements. Merck air particles counters meet JIS B 9921: 1997 and ISO 21501 standards. They are made of stainless steel or plastic with stainless steel components. APC ErgoTouch and APC ErgoTouch Pro 2 are recommended for disinfection and meet the most stringent hygiene requirements.

Merck Millipore offers a wide range of effective active air monitoring solutions for food and beverage industry. Since the industrial environmental hygiene standard is directly related to the microbiological safety of manufactured products, we can reassure you that our designed solutions for active microorganism sampling from air are highly accurate and reliable. Merck air sampling equipment enables customers to choose the technology that suits them best. Air samples are taken with Merck systems where standard petri dishes or special agar stripes and cassettes with the medium can be used. It is also possible to choose cost-effective systems for use in the food and beverage industry, for testing sterile production areas and isolators, explosive environments or compressed gases.

Passive air monitoring using petri dishes is the ideal choice for non-critical environments. This method is also known as sedimentation or deposition method and used for semi-quantitative count of micro-organisms in the air. Merck Petri dish allows you to monitor the microbiological air pollution throughout the entire production process. Each dish is marked with a data matrix bar code, a catalog number, a batch number, a serial number and expiration date. Petri dishes are stored at room temperature.

Merck offers a variety of solutions for personnel and surface monitoring. The aim is to ensure that production facilities are clean, and to reduce the risk of product and process contamination. These are agar media, contact plates with the medium ready to use, swabs – each suitable for different types of surfaces. For personnel and surface monitoring, Merck offers the following products:

• Contact plates. Merck ready to use contact plates are ideal for testing clean rooms, isolation rooms, and non-critical surfaces. You can choose contact plate with neutralizers which neutralize a broad spectrum of antibiotics and disinfectants, making it possible to test sanitised dry surfaces.
• Hycon® contact plates. Hycon® contact plates are a great choice for microbiological testing of smooth and rough surfaces.
• Swabs and plates. Merck swabs and plates are ideal for microbiological testing in hard to reach places.
• HY-RISE® test strips. HY-RISE® test strips are a great tool for surface cleanliness inspection.