Low-cost, Small-scale Decontamination of Laboratory Equipment by Using Chlorine Dioxide Gas

Area of Science:

• Laboratory Animal Medicine
• Microbiology
• Biotechnology

Background:

• Pathogen contamination in laboratory settings necessitates effective decontamination of small equipment.
• Existing chlorine dioxide (ClO₂) gas decontamination methods often require expensive, large-scale equipment.
• There is a need for cost-effective, small-scale decontamination solutions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create and validate an affordable, efficient, safe, and reproducible small-scale decontamination method using ClO₂ gas.
• To evaluate the suitability of household totes as exposure chambers for ClO₂ gas decontamination.

Main Methods:

• Identified a product generating ClO₂ gas from two dry reagents.
• Evaluated four household totes with gasket-seal lids for ClO₂ gas and relative humidity (RH) retention.
• Validated decontamination efficacy using Bacillus atrophaeus (B.a.) and Geobacillus stearothermophilus (G.s.) as biological indicators (BI).

Main Results:

• All tested household totes adequately retained ClO₂ gas and RH for a 15-hour decontamination cycle.
• A ClO₂ gas dose of 71 ± 42 ppm-h over 15 hours at ≥90% RH effectively inactivated both B.a. and G.s..
• No statistical significance was found between B.a. and G.s. as indicators for decontamination efficacy.

Conclusions:

• A low-cost, small-scale method for decontaminating laboratory equipment using ClO₂ gas and household totes was successfully established.
• This method is approximately 1% of the cost of large-scale ClO₂ gas generators, offering a significant cost saving.
• The developed method provides an effective, reproducible, and safe alternative for small-scale laboratory decontamination.