The effective use of chemicals

This article is written to meet the following sections of the Standards:

Contents

• The aim of chemical control
• Using SDS and technical specifications
• Validating that the cleaning procedure works
• Chemical Procedure

The aim of chemical control

Chemicals are needed, there’s no getting away from that. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to clean equipment – and unclean equipment would cause product contamination.

Also, you wouldn’t be able to lubricate equipment – and unlubricated equipment could cause metal on metal contact, which in turn could also cause product contamination. However, uncontrolled use of chemicals can also cause contamination to the product. So, the aim of chemical control is three-fold:

1. You need to make sure the chemicals you use don’t pose a contamination risk.
2. You need to make sure that the chemicals you use, are suitable for what you want to use them for.
3. You need to make sure that the chemicals you use, are suitable for use in a food environment. Which means that they must comply with food regulations and they must not contain allergens.

This means that selecting the right chemical is key.

Selecting the right chemical

You need to select a chemical that will do the job that you want it to (this is known as ‘the application’).

Cleaning chemical control

If the chemicals you’re using are for the purpose of cleaning, you need to consider what kind of clean you want to achieve and what conditions you want to clean under. To do this, it’s probably worth mentioning the cleaning triangle.

To clean effectively, you need three elements: temperature, time and friction. If you remove one of these elements – the clean won’t be effective.

You can adjust the balance of the elements and still achieve an effective clean. For example, you can lower the temperature of the water, if you increase the amount of time and friction. Or you could increase the temperature and friction and reduce the amount of time.

When you’re selecting a chemical for cleaning, you need to know how much time you have to clean, what temperature you can achieve and how much scrubbing (friction) you can apply.

Finally, you need to make sure that the chemical doesn’t cause a contamination problem, which means you need to know how to rinse the chemical off.

Chemical suppliers develop different chemicals to suit lots of different applications, so you need to know what you want, to be able to select the right chemical.

Engineering chemical control

If you’re wanting a chemical for engineering purposes, the same principles apply.  Many equipment manufacturers will recommend chemicals to use with their equipment, based on the needed functionality of the chemical. Using the wrong chemical (or lubricant) on a piece of equipment will mean that the lubricant doesn’t do the job it was intended for, resulting in failure of the equipment.

Engineering chemicals often include allergens, so you need to check this as well.

Operational chemical control

These tend to get forgotten, as they aren’t seen as chemicals. All chemicals, not just the ones you see typically as chemicals, such as cleaning chemicals or lubricants – need to be included.  To do this, you need a way of identifying what materials are ‘chemicals’.

What makes something a chemical?

The easiest way to do this is to look for the hazardous symbols. Any chemical, by law, has to have a hazard symbol – which explains how hazardous it is to people and the environment. Here are the symbols and their meanings:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/chemical-classification/labelling-packaging/hazard-symbols-hazard-pictograms.htm

Chemicals, which tend to get forgotten are things like:

• Printing or coding inks.
• Printer toners.
• Paint.
• Pesticides.
• Glues.
• Cooling chemicals, such as glycol.

Is it suitable?
Once you know what you want the chemical to do and you’ve selected one that’s suitable for the job you want it for, you then need to check to make sure it’s suitable for use with food. This means two things:

1. It must meet the regulations with regard to chemicals suitable for food use.
2. It must not contain allergens.

The law
In the EU there’s a piece of legislation that ensures that you can only use chemicals for food use, where they meet certain rules. This piece of legislation is called Regulation 1935/2004 and the following link provides details for the UK: www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/food-contact-materials

In America the FDA provide similar guidance, which can be found at: www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/packaging-food-contact-substances-fcs

Validating that the cleaning procedure works

Validation is only for cleaning chemicals, you don’t typically need to validate other chemicals. You need to prove (validate) that the procedure you’ve developed works. To do this, you need to be clear on what you want to achieve:

• Do you want it to provide a sterile surface?
• Do you want it to remove allergen residue?
• Or do you want it to achieve a target ATP swab result? (For example, of less than 100.)

Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you then need to prove that the chemical does this using the method you’ve provided. To do this, you first need to prove that the surface you’re about to clean is contaminated.  So, you’d swab it – to prove it is.

Then, you do the clean following the instructions you’ve laid out in your procedure. Because you’re validating the chemical you would need to record all the key criteria, such as:

• The chemical contraction you’ve used (how much chemical was mixed with how much water).
• The temperature of the water used.
• How long it was ‘scrubbed’ (friction) for.
• How the friction was applied.
• How long (exactly) the contact time was.
• What temperature the rinse water was, how it was rinsed and for how long.
• You also need to record the date, the time, who was involved, and who did the clean etc.

Once the clean is complete, you’ll then need to swab it again. Make sure that you swab any key inspection points, as these areas would be the most difficult to clean – so you need to validate that the clean works on them.

You only need to do this validation once unless something changes. If you change the method, or the equipment or if you change the chemical, then you’ll need to do it again.