CCFT helps to cut contamination in UK testing lab

One of the UK's largest food-testing laboratories in the West Midlands was handling approximately 7,000 samples a day and wanted to prevent problems of cross-contamination with prepared testing plates and completed food samples.

The pathology lab had discovered that food sample plates were becoming cross-contaminated with an airborne mould spore identified as Fusarium poae, causing the lab to lose up to 10% of its production. This represented a major cost, with each prepared sample plate plus sample costing around £12.00. The source of contamination could not be identified, but upon investigation by Quest's AirManager team, the possible sources were isolated to three possible causes: • The starch compounds used in the laundering of the lab coats. • The packaging in which the sample dishes were transported. • A S/H incubator unit that had been brought into the environment. Because it was not practicable to isolate the source of contamination any further and because the human traffic within the main laboratory had easy ingress into the pathology lab, it was decided to treat the whole laboratory area. Five of AirManager's BVM 570 Air Sterilisation Systems were fitted into the laboratory; two into the main pathology lab and the remaining three into the main lab area. The effect of these units was to remove, within 24 hours, all airborne cross-contamination to such a level that there was no detectable media contamination of any kind from then onwards.