Isolation Wards and Contamination Laboratories
Air Tightness Solutions provides Isolation Ward Testing and advice for Category 3 Isolation Chambers to ensure they meet their designed requirements. Isolation Chambers must be designed and built so as to prevent or control the exposure of people and the environment to biological agents.
Isolation rooms for the prevention of airborne transmitted diseases are designed depending on the risk of infection and the hazard category of the pathogen. Pressure drops to minimise transmission between those inside and outside a room is used. Inside the room, a well-mixed dilution ventilation is used to rapidly exhaust pathogens. Isolation rooms can consist of a positively pressurised ventilated lobby (PPVL) and neutral pressure patient’s room with en suite, with an in-room ventilation rate of 10 ACH.
The successful operation requires the air tightness of the room to be both within its required air tightness criteria and that the airflow through known air leakage paths is within defined limits.
Reducing the air leakage of an isolation room has a number of distinct benefits:
- It will provide a degree of passive protection against contamination to or from adjacent areas.
- It will enable the ventilation system to be balanced
- The balancing damper can be specified accurately and operate correctly
- When the rooms are fumigated there will be reduced fumigant escaping to adjacent areas.
