New microbial air sampler minimizes false positives and eliminates costly sterilization steps
December 3, 2015, Boulder, CO – The BioCapt® Single-Use Microbial Impactor, designed by and offered exclusively through Particle Measuring Systems, helps minimize false positives for microbial activity in pharmaceutical cleanrooms by reducing contamination from handling of microbial plates. This results in a decrease in the number investigations and time associated with those investigations, allowing personnel to focus on improving production operations. Additionally, many costly and time consuming sterilization steps, such as autoclaving, disinfecting, handling and logistics are eliminated.
The impactor design creates a new solution by integrating an agar media plate and sampling head into a single unit, replacing the media plate and stainless steel sampling head while minimizing media exposure. Direct operator contact with the media plate is prevented, which reduces the risk of improper handling and removes the need for traditional air sampler sterilization steps. Reliable results and no more false positives from excessive handling mean significant financial savings and elimination of time spent on investigating false positive results.
This new device has a proven recovery of microorganisms under stressed conditions after two hours of continuous air sampling (25 L/min flow rate) reducing the number of plate changes required for continuous air sampling.
“This innovative approach to microbial air sampling and monitoring builds on the collection efficiencies of our BioCapt stainless steel impactor, while also virtually eliminating false positives through specialized packaging and single-use application,” said Giovanni Scialo, Vice President of Life Sciences for Particle Measuring Systems.
The BioCapt Single-Use Microbial Impactor is ready to use, simple to implement, and is packaged with three samplers in a multi-bagged, gamma-irradiated, VHP impermeable package.