Clean Room Glove Classifications

Clean rooms have a stringent classification system based on the number of particles found in its air. There are also dress requirements. Most classes of clean rooms require that workers wear gloves. While there is no exact system of classification for clean room gloves, there are many factors to keep in mind when choosing a glove for your clean room.

Things to Consider

• The main concern when choosing gloves is picking a model that will both contain contaminants on the user's skin as well as not shed any of its own particles into the clean room environment. Therefore, you want to be sure that clean room gloves have no pinholes or tears in them, and are unlikely to contract them during use, to stop any contaminants from the user reaching the clean room environment. The gloves must also be thoroughly liquid-proof and chemical resistant, to stop anything reaching the user's skin. Also be certain that the gloves are skin tolerant; that is that they don't contain chemicals that will irritate the user's skin.

  In addition to both protecting the user and protecting the clean room environment from the user, clean room gloves must also not shed particles into the clean room environment, as the number of particles in the air are the key criteria for clean room classification. Unfortunately, there is no official industry standard for how to test gloves for cleanliness. However, there is a method known as the wet test that is used by most manufacturers and is widely recognized in the industry. The wet test involves cutting a square piece from the glove and weighing it, and then weighing the whole glove. Next, the gloves area in square cm is calculated. Then the glove is immersed in deionized water and shaken for 10 minutes. Finally, a 25 mL sample of the water is taken and the particles in it are counted using a particle counter. This is done three times, and the results are averaged.

  Based on user requirements, MAPA Aventech, a protection equipment manufacturer, has developed a system for clean rooom glove classification. It is the best way to decide if gloves will work for your class of clean room.

  According to MAPA's system, for clean rooms Class 10 and 100, the gloves must 250 to 500 particles per micrometer of area. For Class 1000, 500 to 1000 particles per micrometer is fine. For Class 1000 and up, 1,000 to 1,700 particles per micrometer is fine. (See Reference for a full chart, and Resources for a chart of the Cleanroom Classification system.)

  It is very important to require particle count information from your glove manufacturer, as they can have a large effect on your clean room's success.