Issue

ATLANTA—The rate of foodborne illnesses in the United States is dropping overall, however, certain types of Salmonella reached their highest level since the government began record keeping in 1996. News of foodborne infections and recalls of possibly contaminated products makes headlines almost daily.

According to a recent report by Dataquest Inc., worldwide semiconductor revenues topped $160 billion in 1999, up 22 percent from 1998's total.

Trio merge to form Genzyme Biosurgery; abconco celebrates 75th anniversary; Asyts nets multimillion-dollar order for automation system; and more.

COLCHESTER, VT—THINGS ARE LOOKING UP FOR cleanroom builders and suppliers as the semiconductor market rebounds.

CORNING, NY?AFTER ABOUT TWO months of evaluation, David Sutton, a vibration and acoustics engineer at Corning Inc., made several recommendations to management, from enclosing vacuum canisters to wrapping HVAC ducts, as part of a company-wide effort to decrease noise in the optical fiber manufacturer's ISO Class 7 (Class 10,000) cleanrooms.

ABITA, LA?Anyone who has ever made home-brewed beer will tell you that a whole batch can be botched if special care is not taken when bottling?molds and wild yeast lingering in the air can make a good brew go bad.

ROCKLEIGH, NJ—A cleanroom on wheels is a relatively new industry concept, but how about one that has a turbo-charged, 268-horsepower engine and a 100-watt sound system?

MOUNT PROSPECT, IL — The first nail has been hammered into the coffin of Fed-Std 209E. At presstime, CleanRooms learned that the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies (IEST) Working Group CC100 sent a letter to the US General Services Administration (GSA) in mid-May recommending that the U.S. government adopt ISO 14644-1 and -2 in place of Fed-Std 209E.

Applied Materials expands; Fedders acquires Trion; and Shield Medicare offers cleanroom contract manufacturing.

STUTTGART, GERMANY —According to top management of European facilities and suppliers of cleanroom products and services, the market is heating up and the global upswing in the microelectronic business is undoubtedly leading the way [see "Europe on the upswing," CleanRooms, May 2000, p. 1].

"The recently publicized list of fab projects is only the tip of the iceberg," says Dr. Harald Binder, executive vice president of M+W Zander Facility ...

ST.-PRIEST, FRANCE—AFTER SUFFER-ing two years of losses handed down by the last downturn in the U.S. semiconductor market, things are finally looking up for Daw Technologies Inc. — and it has the European market to thank.

SWINDEN, ENGLAND—Optical Micro Devices Ltd. (OMD) is a small start-up with some big plans. The Swinden, England-based company wants to take a familiar, and successful, business model and apply it to the optoelectronics world.

DUNFERMLINE, SCOTLAND—To keep up with the burgeoning demand for chips caused by the growth in mobile communications, Motorola (Schaumburg, IL) will invest $2-billion in the Dunfermline, Scotland, fab shell abandoned by Hyundai two years ago.

Based on what I have seen in most applications of contamination control containment devices, it would appear that suppliers are not asking the basic questions: "What activities are going to take place within the device?

This is the third in a series of articles on the new ISO Global Cleanroom Standards. This month we will explore ISO-14644-4, which is one of the most comprehensive documents produced by the ISO Technical Committee ISO/TC209.

Light scattering is the basis of the most commonly used instruments for monitoring and classifying cleanrooms as well as measuring particle emission rates from tools, filters and processes in a cleanroom.

Micro-porous fabric; Multi-purpose wringer; Dust-proof clothing construction; and more.

I loved the title "Blowing budget" (CleanRooms, May 2000, p. 15) and the article was excellent in the area of cost tradeoffs between new and old facilities.

Despite its myriad uncertainties and ongoing intellectual struggles concerning its future direction, Europe is looking more and more like the new land of opportunity for the eager visitor and opportunity-starved native alike.

Some people just don't care. Perhaps, you know them: the employees or co-workers in your cleanroom who wave off procedures that are put in place to inhibit the destructive contamination of which they are the source.

Safety is paramount in all we do, particularly in the manufacturing work environment. Identifying implications of Environmental, Safety and Health (ES&H) challenges can prevent endangerment to workers and the environment. Clean manufacturing facilities present certain unique safety concerns that must be evaluated, quantified and dealt with by the ES&H professional and all associated with their design, construction and use.

If you think equipment and utensil cleaning are tasks best left for rainy days, consider the case of Ganes Chemicals Inc. (Carlstadt, NJ), a 75-year-old manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). On Christmas Eve 1998, the company received a warning letter from the FDA after investigators documented significant deviations from current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs).

Architects and engineers transform "Building 391" into an optical lens finishing facility Well-known as one of the nation's top defense engineering centers, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL; Livermore, CA) has also conducted numerous programs intended for scientific and commercial applications.

Wet scrubber; Cleanroom boot; Teflon tubing; and more.