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1. Simple to use. Everyone can agree that a sterilant gas monitoring system is important to protect personnel from exposure to toxic gases. Most people have more work to do than ever before. Beyond knowing that the gas monitor is there, and that it will work when needed, people do not have the time or inclination to become intimately involved with their gas monitor. Simplicity of use is a philosophy that goes hand in hand with good design and application of advanced technology.

2. Accuracy & reliability: No false alarms. Most gas monitors on the market do a good job of meeting their target gas specifications. However, if a gas detection system sounds an alarm, there is a gas leak unless proven false. Action must be taken including evacuation, equipment shut-down and trouble shooting which interrupts processes causing delays. Many false alarms, like the well-known story of the boy who cried wolf, end up with people ignoring the alarm; not good if the monitor is responding to a real gas leak.

3. Continuous monitoring. Exposure badges are often used to record employee exposure to hazardous gases. However, badges only provide a history of exposure that has occurred. They don’t provide any warning of current exposure. Toxic gas exposure doesn’t happen on schedule, and so only a continuous monitor can provide adequate protection. Better still is a monitoring system that gives you advance warning of an exposure that is nearing the OSHA Permissible Exposure Limit. This allows time to take proactive measures for the safety of your employees. Some monitors are not continuous but rather sequential sampling devices. Long cycle times between areas being sampled prohibits the monitor’s ability to provide immediate warning of a leak.

4. Easy calibration and low maintenance. Calibration is the bane of gas monitoring, but all gas monitors require periodic calibration to verify that the response to gas is accurate and to correct as necessary. Traditional calibration requires someone to periodically apply test gas to each monitor. In-house calibration results in significant financial and time burdens on users. Newer approaches reduce the burden, by having the instrument calibrate itself from an attached gas cylinder. This is an in-situ generation of test gas, which is okay for testing but questionable for calibration. Other approaches include periodically swapping the sensors for factory calibrated sensors. Another issue with maintenance is the amount of moving parts and routine maintenance on a system. A good rule of thumb is "less moving parts, less maintenance and points of failure." The key issue before buying a system is to determine the calibration and maintenance burden, which varies from significant to minimal.

5. Modular design. A typical gas monitoring system may consist of multiple monitoring points at different locations. These monitoring points then connect back to a central station that performs varying degrees of analysis and record keeping. A modular design capable of monitoring multiple sterilant gases allows the system to be customized to today’s needs and adapted to tomorrow’s requirements. Even though no manufacturer likes to admit it, any kind of instrumentation can, and sometimes does, fail. A good question to ask the manufacturer is if the central station or one of the monitoring points were to fail, does the remainder of the system continue to function? Modular systems are less likely to have a complete system failure.

6. Automatic record keeping. A good gas detection system should ease the OSHA 30-year record keeping requirement. Modern computerized systems include automatic record keeping and reporting functions that make record keeping simple. This is important for healthcare organizations especially when fulfilling a request by an employee for their personal exposure records. A computerized system that can be backed up guarantees that you will always have exposure history when you need it.

When it comes down to it, the most important thing is to have a low maintenance, simple to use system that works well. There are many different sterilant gas monitoring systems available with different design features. It is important to specify and find one that meets the needs of your organization to protect its employees while meeting federal regulatory requirements.