Five Tests For Pharmaceutical Containment

As active pharmaceutical ingredients increase in potency and become more hazardous to work with, pharmacological and chemical containment devices are required to meet containment performance targets through independent testing before use in laboratories can begin. Typically, we test containment equipment against some minimum performance standard. This is necessary to protect procedural integrity and the sensitive products undergoing processing.

As air sampling and measurement techniques improve and cumulative recorded data becomes more robust, containment testing has grown more refined—even if the tests themselves are more complicated.

There are many reasons why such changes have occurred and influenced the design and production of containment units and the means of evaluating them. Powders and liquids are dangerous to handle over long periods, and the manipulating process equipment is more substantial in both size and capability. Testing is not one-size-fits-all when it comes to containment performance—here we will analyze and explain the different methods, their reasons, and which would be most beneficial for your first (or next) containment device to ensure personnel protection.