Cleanroom suit and garments are worn over your normal clothes when you work inside a critical environment like a cleanroom facility. A cleanroom suits differ from normal protective suits worn inside a general laboratory. For any garment to be cleanroom-safe, it must be manufactured and packaged inside a cleanroom. The reasoning behind this is that if your cleanroom garment was manufactured in an open area like a standard apparel sewing or manufacturing facility, thousands of particles, dust, and possibly bacterial contamination would attach to the products and then be introduced into your cleanroom as soon as you open the cleanroom garment package. Even if apparel is packaged inside of a cleanroom, but not manufactured and clean-processed in a controlled environment, it can introduce contamination into your facility. Many new cleanrooms established without the proper guidance and training for working in a critical environment find themselves purchasing the wrong cleanroom suits and other apparel and cleanroom cleaning supplies. This results in them not meeting the standards for their controlled environment.
Cleanroom suit and garment options include coveralls, bunny suits, lab coats, frocks, boot covers, protective sleeves, hoods, and other specialty apparel styles that offer covering of your body and street clothes. Below we briefly detail each cleanroom suit option to better explain the differences between each style, as well as which cleanroom cleanliness class level each style may be appropriate for. Depending on if your cleanroom is a Class 100, Class 1000 or less strict Class 10,000 – 100,000… different cleanroom suits styles would be suitable to wear. Learn more about the different classes of cleanrooms and what apparel is used in each facility type.
Cleanroom Coveralls and Bunny Suits
Cleanroom coverall suits are a one-piece suit with legs, arms, and a zipper front. You step into the suit and it fully covers and protects your body, arms, and legs. This is the most popular cleanroom suit option especially for sterile facilities, and what is usually referred to as a “cleanroom suit”. For further protection and coverage, some people opt for a full bunny suit coverall, this adds attached shoe covers as well as an attached cleanroom hood. We also offers eyes-only hoods. This style of suit offers maximum protection and pretty much covers your whole body except your face. A benefit to this style of cleanroom garment is no exposed skin and simplicity of one piece of apparel. The alternate would be a normal coverall, separate boot covers and then a separate hood if required. Coverall cleanroom suits are most popular in Class 100 ISO5 and Class 1000 ISO6 facilities where particle cleanliness is most strict. Sterile cleanroom suits and garments are available as well from Cleanroom Connection at great prices.
Cleanroom Lab Coats and Frocks
The lab coat cleanroom suit is worn like a jacket over your shirt with snaps on the front for closure. This type of clean room suit offers no protection or coverage of your legs, shoes or head. Typically, cleanroom lab coats fall to the waistline. When you are needing the coverage of a lab coat, but down to the knees, that is a frock-style suit. Frocks essentially are long lab coats. They also offer snaps on the front for closure as well elastic wrists to ensure no particles fall out of your sleeves while working. Elastic sleeves are an important part of any cleanroom suit including coveralls or lab coat styles.
Cleanroom Boot Covers and Shoe Covers
If you are not wearing a bunny suit with integrated booties and are required to wear covering on your shoes, you will need to don boot covers or shoe covers. Cleanroom boot covers and shoe covers are often preferred since they go higher up to you knee, thus overlapping your pant leg and ensuring no exposed skin at the ankle. Boot covers and shoe covers come in a variety of materials, and must be durable since you are walking throughout the day. A tear or rip in your shoe cover will allow dirt or contamination to be introduced into your clean room from the soles of your street-shoes. Many clean rooms actually double-up on shoe covers, wearing an outer and inner cover for extra protection. Many times this is done because they are wearing inferior shoe covers. Let Cleanroom Connection send you samples and offer guidance on picking out high-quality cleanroom shoes covers that won’t tear.
Cleanroom Sleeves and Hoods
Cleanroom suit styles outside of the full bunny suits often require workers to wear some type of head covering like a bouffant or hood. For less strict facilities like a Class 10,000+, a bouffant is often sufficient.
For Class 1000 and cleaner, like a Class 10 or Class 100 clean room, hoods are required to ensure hair or any particles won’t be introduced from your head or neck area. Hoods come in two main styles, a full-face opening hood or an eyes-only opening hood. A full-face opening hood is the most frequently purchased. It covers your head, ears and, neck area, but not your face. Wearing an eyes-only opening hood covers your entire head and neck including your face area, except the eyes. A pair of cleanroom goggles complete full facial coverage when wearing an eyes-only cleanroom hood.
Another area where coverage sometimes can be a challenge is the wrist area. Even with elastic wrists in a cleanroom suit, some people with longer arms need additional coverage at the wrists due to pulling up of sleeves when their arms are fully extended. Wearing cleanroom sleeves over cleanroom suit sleeves extends coverage to wrists.
Cleanroom Suit Experts
Cleanroom Connection offers expert guidance when choosing cleanroom suits and garments for all controlled environment industries.We can help you understand your protocols and how cleanroom apparel affects them including cleanroom garment donning and doffing procedures. With over 15 years of working directly with the top manufacturers of cleanroom apparel including DuPont, Ansell BioClean, Enviroguard, VAI Veltek, Kimtech, 3M, QRP, CTI, and others. Our cleanroom experts are very familiar with all cleanroom apparel options, materials, styles, and protection levels they offer. We take the time to discuss your needs, understand your protocols such as USP797, USP800, and cGMP. We send free samples to ensure you are satisfied with the correct apparel choices that work for your SOP and cleanroom staff. Our guaranteed lowest pricing on cleanroom supplies and high stock levels to ensure no surprise back-orders or discontinued products make up a top choice among cleanroom suppliers. Cleanroom Connection is not your typical cleanroom supply company that offers hundreds of similar items creating confusion for customers when choosing supplies to order, your dedicated account manager answers all your questions.
We offer a hand-picked selection of cleanroom apparel and suits that we have personally worn, evaluated, and inspected. Our customer service team goes above and beyond to ensure complete satisfaction and customer education on all our cleanroom consumables. Contact us today toll free at 800.616.5319.
