MICROBIAL SAMPLER

The Clean Air Monitoring Solutions (CAMS) portable and isolator range of microbial air monitors have been designed to meet the demanding requirements of the pharmaceutical and healthcare. They are used for continuous monitoring in high-grade areas, where in-process monitoring of viable particles can be critical and where ISO-14698, CEN-17141 and GMP Annex 1 compliance must be satisfied.

Most users are already familiar with using agar based methods for environmental monitoring - using settle plates for up to 4 hours and air samplers to sample a cubic metre of air in just 10 minutes. Along with these methods, users will have many years of valuable experience of handling plates, interpreting the results and a wealth of historic data as a reference.

Early air samplers typically used larger agar plates and were capable of sampling for longer periods, but with legislation allowing the use of 'rapid m³ samplers', the need to monitor disappeared and agar became a forgotten monitoring method. The introduction of Annex 1 has left many in the industry searching for a suitable monitoring technology. Real time fluorescence based systems are pitched as the 'latest and greatest solution but they are complex, results interpretation is not as clearly defined as agar based methods and crucially, they do not allow easy identification to species level.