How to Clean a Biosafety Cabinet
Cleaning Up a Spill (Biosafety Cabinet): Biosafety Level 3
10 Easy steps to cleaning a contaminated surface in the biosafety cabinet
- Remember to wear appropriate PPE and leave the Biosafety Cabinet on during spill cleanup.
- To begin, apply disinfect to a towel and decontaminate and remove items from the area of the spill.
- Put the waste from the spill into a biohazard bag inside the cabinet. The biohazard bag should never be kept outside the cabinet.
- Put down the towel over the spill to prevent aerosolization.
- Apply the disinfectant – in this case bleach – over the towel and work from the outside to the inside.
- Wait the appropriate amount of time for disinfectant to work.
- Next, wipe up the spill and any excess liquid with the towels.
- Then, apply more disinfectant to the spill area. Once again, wait the appropriate amount of time for the disinfectant to work.
- Wipe up the area one more time with the towels.
- Because Bleach was used as the disinfectant, a sterile water rinse should be used because bleach will corrode the stainless steel inside the cabinet.
Note: Cleaning processes may vary across applications. Check with your local specifications and processes to ensure compliance with your cleanroom operations.
About Biosafety Cabinets
Biosafety Cabinets Protect You and Your Operation
A biosafety cabinet (BSC), also commonly referred to a biological safety cabinet or microbiological safety cabinet, is a portable enclosure that is ventilated. The biosafety cabinet is a laboratory workspace that ensures safety and cleanliness for both the person operating in the cleanroom as well as the products or materials being handled in the cleanroom. The biosafety cabinet creates a safe environment for working with drugs, chemicals or hazardous materials. Often times these materials contain pathogens, requiring the environment to be compliant with a defined biosafety level. There are many types of biosafety cabinets that differ by the degree of biocontainment specifications.
The primary purpose of a BSC is to serve as a means to protect the laboratory worker and the surrounding environment from pathogens. The exhaust air in a BSC is HEPA-filtered as it exits the biosafety cabinet, removing harmful bacteria and viruses. This is in contrast to a laminar flow clean bench, which blows unfiltered exhaust air towards the user and is not safe for work with pathogenic agents. The secondary purpose of most BSCs is to maintain the sterility of materials inside the biosafety cabinet.
