Cleanroom Practices

Dave Woodcox · May 24, 2023

My company is operating six ISO class 8 cleanrooms and recently the question of employees wearing jewelry in the cleanrooms has come up. The current practice is to allow jewelry provided it is completely covered by gown, hairnet, beard cover or gloves.

I am looking for any information on standards, even industry standards, or U.S. regulations related to wearing jewelry in a cleanroom.

Wearerofmanyhats · May 24, 2023

when i worked for HP I gained a few perspectives on this:

1 in almost every safety or employee handbook in any manufacturing environment one of the first things that comes up is dress code, for safety sake no loose jewelry. "Yes, that includes the fake ring your fiance mightve given you, we don't need to find that out when using a magnet."
2 from a particulate standpoint, only absolutely necessary items can enter the clean room
3 common sense says any jewelry can easily pierce a tyvek suit meant to protect the cleanroom from YOU
4 there are exceptions, silicone rings, smart watches, headphones, phone covers that don't intrude on the listed items above in some cases

Dave Woodcox · May 25, 2023

Wearerofmanyhats said:
when i worked for HP I gained a few perspectives on this:

1 in almost every safety or employee handbook in any manufacturing environment one of the first things that comes up is dress code, for safety sake no loose jewelry. "Yes, that includes the fake ring your fiance mightve given you, we don't need to find that out when using a magnet."
2 from a particulate standpoint, only absolutely necessary items can enter the clean room
3 common sense says any jewelry can easily pierce a tyvek suit meant to protect the cleanroom from YOU
4 there are exceptions, silicone rings, smart watches, headphones, phone covers that don't intrude on the listed items above in some cases

Thank you for your insights.

Wearerofmanyhats · May 25, 2023

I have first hand seen how upset people get over restrictions for the clean room. Often times these are lowly paid tech jobs with tons of middle management issues enforcing this stuff. You need to get buy in from the maintenance staff and engineers to help set the standard. If you start from the bottom it will be a grueling challenge of cat and mouse. Do you have a contamination control committee, engineer, and/ or etc.?

FRA 2 FDA · Jun 19, 2023

I have no knowledge of clean room standards or classifications. All I can offer is that I was once a tech at a biotech company that produced an implantable protein. As you can imagine, the clean room rules were pretty tight with different levels of gowning for different areas. While make up and nail polish were not permitted, there was no restriction on jewelry. We also did not work with any machinery that would have posed a safety risk with jewelry.

chris1price · Jun 19, 2023

Its not in ISO14644, but the Eudralex Annex 1, for sterile pharmaceuticals simply says "Wristwatches, make-up and jewellery should not be worn in clean areas." This would apply in all grades of cleanroom, including the lowest, Grade D.

Pawel Zelazowski · Jun 27, 2023

I understand people's resistance to taking out all their jewelry; it may be an additional restriction for them, and no one likes that. My suggestion to you is to provide a secure place for each individual where they can keep all their jewelry and extra belongings throughout their shift. After work, they can retrieve their items. What's more important is that people won't struggle to take them out during their shift because they're afraid to come to work without them.

Cleanroom Practices

Dave Woodcox

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Wearerofmanyhats

New, don't hurt me

Dave Woodcox

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Wearerofmanyhats

New, don't hurt me

FRA 2 FDA

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chris1price

Pawel Zelazowski

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