2. Clean Rooms
After 30 years of experience in fields as diverse as the clergy, charter school
management, aerospace engineering, and high-tech, Pastor Lee McFarland
today heads his own consulting firm, advising churches, businesses, and
schools. When not working with his clients, Lee McFarland enjoys keeping
abreast of developments in the various fields in which he has worked.
3. Clean Rooms
An important element of many high-tech manufacturing or research
environments is the “clean room.” This is a space where the level of airborne
contaminants, such as dust and microbes, is kept at or below acceptable
levels. Parameters established by the International Standards Organization
(ISO) set forth nine levels of what’s considered “acceptable” contamination,
expressed as the number of particles in a cubic meter of air.
4. Clean Rooms
Environmental contamination is an ever-present hazard in such fields as the life
sciences, semiconductor manufacturing, pharmaceuticals , and
biotechnology, among others. The air in an average office building contains
about 35 million particles of half a micron in size. Particles smaller than can be
seen by the naked eye can disrupt sensitive technology. To give some
perspective, a human hair is about 75-100 microns in diameter.
5. Clean Rooms
Clean air technology reduces the contaminants to an acceptable level,
depending on the use to which a space is put. For instance, the most stringent
of the ISO standards, ISO1, allows only 12 particles per cubic meter of air. Each
standard, from ISO2 to ISO9, permits about 10 times the contaminants as the
next “cleanest” level.
6. Clean Rooms
A clean room is built from special materials in accordance with exacting
specifications. Then, the entire environment is managed by filtering the airflow
into the room, controlling the direction and force of the airflow, and the
room’s temperature and humidity. The room must be constantly maintained
and monitored to ensure that it continues to meet the standards to which it
was built.
