Cleaning of
Wooden Flooring
In Europe, beech, oak and maple are frequently used for floor coverings, while mahogany, teak and pine are very popular in Asia.
Wooden floors are considered to be especially warm underfoot. They have good insulation properties and low heat conductivity. They are highly elastic, because walking on it is less of a strain on the feet than on hard floors. With a suitable underlay (e. g. insulating screed) it is also possible to achieve good sound insulation and deaden the noise of footsteps.
Wooden floors can be left untreated or, depending on the location and degree of wear and tear, stained, waxed, impregnated with oil, polished, varnished or sealed. Since wooden floors are very sensitive to moisture, no polymer dispersions or self-shine emulsions should be used for initial care of unsealed wooden floors. Instead, use hard waxes that are applied in the form of liquid or hot wax. To achieve a good conditioning film, first coat the floor with liquid wax before applying hot wax with a specially designed appliance and then buffing it up.
As little water as possible should be used when cleaning wooden floors. On no account must they be drenched. Before starting maintenance cleaning, deep cleaning, freshening up or polishing, remove all dust, sand and other dirt from the floor because of its abrasive effect. This is best done with a powerful dry vacuum equipped with a parquet nozzle.
Traditional methods for cleaningwooden floors:
- Sweeping by using a sweeping compound, wax sweeping chips are suitable for all wooden floors. This method is good for smaller areas or areas where there is a lot of furniture.
- Polishing and vacuum polishing are good for restoring shine to waxed floors. In vacuum polishing, fine dirt and dust is picked up simultaneously. Waxes are very easy to polish, so vacuum polishing can be carried out with single-disc machines (300rpm or more) with an additional suction unit and equipped with a polishing brush or pad.
- Damp wiping binds dust as moist or specially treated cleaning textiles (wet wiping gauze, wet wiping sleeve) remove loose fine dirt (dust, fluff).
- Intensive treatment with a fast single-disc machine (approximately 1,100rpm) and a soft pad is suitable for floors with a conditioning film. This technique is used to remove stubborn dirt such as heel marks or footmarks.The remains of worn conditioning film are replenished by spraying on a suitable care agent, and any remaining conditioning film is renovated.
- Wet Cleaning by hand using cleaning textiles for removing stubborn dirt such as drink stains or street grime is a one-step method, i. e. the floor is cleaned in a single pass with a well wrung-out cleaning textile (mop, wiping sleeve, floor cloth). Any remaining liquid is left to dry out. To prevent wood floor from turning grey if this method is used, the cleaning textile should be changed frequently, that is every 10 to 30sqm, depending on the degree of soiling. This method is suitable only for sealed floors.
Alternative Cleaning Methods
An efficient, rational and fast method is to use a scrubber-drier with a roller scrubber. Two roller brushes or pads rotating in opposite directions make strong, even contact pressure (up to 260 g/sq cm) across their entire working width at a speed of up to 1,100 rpm, which can be regulated in steps depending on the machine. This excellent floor contact enables the machine to extract dirt efficiently from the wood and restore the shine to the floor. The scrubber-drier damp wipes or wet wipes as part of a single operation. It can also be used for buffing or local treatment with soft, white or yellow polishing brushes or pads.
Deep & Maintenance Cleaning
Both cleaning procedures should only be applied in the one-step method, preferably using a scrubber with roller brushes, which are much better at penetrating unevenness in the structure of the wood and extracting dirt. Depending on the type of hardness of wood, the scrubber should be fitted with red, standard brushes or white, soft polishing brushes. For deep cleaning, it is advisable to use an alkaline floor deep cleaning agent in a 3% to 5% solution. For maintenance cleaning, very good results can be achieved with a wiping conditioner in a 0.5% to 3% solution, depending on how dirty the floor is. Pass over the soiled area swiftly and use only a small amount of cleaning solution. A few seconds after the cleaning solution is put, the machine’s suction beam reliably vacuums it up again, thus preventing the wooden flooring from becoming too wet. It is important to vacuum as thoroughly as possible. Residual water should not remain on the floor.
Freshening / Polishing
Slight scratches, heel or footmarks can be removed easily with a spray cleaner. The cleaner is sprayed mainly on the streaks and then, depending on the surface structure, buffed with soft, white brushes or yellow pad rollers or horsehair brushes, producing an even shine.
Cleanroom Gloves
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Proper selection and usage of gloves in cleanrooms is an important component of cleanroom hygiene. Appropriate labeling by glove manufacturers can help in right choice by the cleanroom personnel.
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In unclean manufacturing environments, gloves are typically worn to protect the wearer from hazards such as chemicals, extreme heat/cold, and rough or sharp surfaces that could cause hand abrasions. On the other hand, in clean manufacturing settings such as cleanrooms and other controlled environments, gloves are worn to protect the products or processes from contamination and are used along with cleanroom gowns, masks and other process protection apparels. Therefore, unlike in a dirty manufacturing environment, where users must identify hazards to human health and safety, in a cleanroom environment, it’s important to analyze hazards and risks to the process and product – the critical control points of contamination by personnel.
Hazard Analysis & Risk Assessment
Clean environment can become dirty due to human contamination:
- Even when stationary, people generate about 100,000 particles of 0.3 microns or greater. On the move, this rises to about five million.
- Every square inch of the human body has an average of 32 million bacteria on it.
- Every minute of the day, we lose about 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells off the surface of our skin.
- One square inch of hand surface area has an average of 10,000 microorganisms.
Part of the hazard analysis and risk assessment process involves understanding of the cleanroom environment and the allowable levels of particulates, extractables and non-volatile residues (NVR). For sterile/aseptic cleanrooms, the hazard analysis and risk assessment process should focus not only on particulate control but also on microbiological control.
Cleanrooms differ from industry to industry. Medical device manufacturers may operate at ISO Level 8 for raw material processing, ISO Level 7 for assembly and packaging and ISO Level 5 for aseptic assembly and QC testing for sterility. Pharmaceutical manufacturers may operate at ISO Level 5 for sterile filtration and aseptic filling/stoppering; ISO Level 7 for solid dose granulation, blending, compression, and coating or aseptic compounding; and ISO Level 8 for solid dose packaging and cleaning, sterile materials staging, and sterile capping, labeling and packaging.
Gloves have to be chosen as per the labels based on cleanroom classification. This helps to make sure that particulate levels, extractables and NVR levels are appropriate for the specific cleanroom class. Some manufacturers specify which gloves are appropriate for different cleanroom classes. Other glove suppliers may label their gloves as “critical” or “controlled”. There are no published standards that designate gloves as “ISO 7/Class 10,000” or “ISO 5/Class 100.” In cleanrooms, which are not very clean, it may be appropriate to use exam gloves.
Managing the Process
Many people have a stake in the process of selecting and qualifying any new product to be used in a cleanroom. Fab/production managers, contamination control manager, validation engineers, QA/QC department, cleanroom materials specialists and purchase officials should all play a crucial role. In pharma and biotech cleanrooms, local safety officers must ensure that the glove does not violate any EPA or OSHA regulations or permits. Regulatory personnel need to be involved as any changes to process may affect FDA licenses. Users will be able to provide important feedback on comfort and dexterity issues.
For aseptic cleanrooms, testing should be done on three lots of the gloves before it can be validated. Once approved, it is important to change the standards of practice for that cleanroom to reflect the new glove. Operator training is critical. Proper donning/doffing and when to change gloves must be covered when training employees on gowning procedures. Proper gowning (including gloving) should be evaluated on an ongoing basis with fresher training conducted as needed.
Performance Certification
Consistently superior performance is of utmost importance in the cleanroom environment. Shutting down a cleanroom can cost manufacturers up to $1.5 million per day. Ensure the glove you choose is not only of the highest quality, but that it also stays within a reasonable variance of that level over time. A lot of consistency should be ensured from raw materials through processing.
Acceptable Quality Level (AQL)
This refers to the probability of having defective gloves within a lot. The lower the AQL number, the lower the probability of defective gloves. While ASTM sets an AQL of 2.5, some glove suppliers exceed that standard to provide gloves with fewer pinholes and thus, a greater level of barrier protection.
Glove suppliers should provide certificates of analysis (COA) with particle counts, extractable counts and other important data for each lot of product, trend data, technical specification sheets, and certificates of irradiation (COI) if purchasing sterile gloves. Some suppliers make this information easily accessible on their web-sites after plugging in the glove’s lot number.
