Effective cleaning and disinfection is an essential part of the contamination control strategy designed to maintain cleanroom cleanliness and surfaces with a low bioburden population.
For cleaning and disinfecting cleanrooms, either the double bucket or triple bucket wet system can be deployed (dry methods are woefully ineffective).
The triple-bucket system uses two buckets of disinfectant or detergent and one empty bucket. It has been demonstrated that a triple bucket system improved the effectiveness of cleaning and disinfection of a cleanroom (as well as healthcare facilities, especially when used with a mechanical wringer.
Too often a fear of contamination encourages the use of powerful disinfectants
In addition, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states a preference for the use of the “two bucket system” only for cleaning and the “three bucket system” for disinfection.
It is therefore recommended that the use of a triple bucket system should be considered in higher grade cleanrooms (EU GMP Grade A and B, as well as C areas containing isolators used for aseptic processing).
In this article, the case for the triple bucket system is set out.
Contamination control objectives
The objectives of cleaning and disinfection are to achieve specified microbial cleanliness levels as well as minimising residuals (where residuals can pose cross-contamination risks to product as well as functioning to inactivate other cleaning or disinfection agents).
The importance of cleaning before disinfection must not be overlooked.
The relative weakness of the single-bucket system was demonstrated in a 1968 study
Too often a fear of contamination encourages the use of powerful disinfectants for the elimination of real or imagined surface contamination levels.
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