Why Gamma Irradiation?
Gamma irradiation is critical in ensuring the health care industry can meet the global demand for sterile medical devices. Powered by Cobalt-60, the carefully administered dose of the process works to ionize the product or item. This isotope is stored in a specially built double-encapsulated stainless-steel pencil that strictly follows international regulations and systems.
Sterilization using γ-rays has the following advantages over other sterilization methods:
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Clean and Effective
The use of gamma irradiation to sterilize medical devices, especially single-use surgical gloves, has been particularly appealing because it causes little temperature rise, no residue and does not require quarantine period after processing.
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Safe and Reliable
A common misconception is that products and items treated by γ-rays are radioactive and are not safe —when, in fact, they're totally the opposite! The process of sterilizing items using gamma irradiation does not involve sufficient energy to cause the treated products to become radioactive.
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High Penetration
Able to penetrate deep into items and provide excellent dose uniformity ratio (DUR), which makes it ideal for a wide range of products, no matter the density, orientation, or type of material. It can also work on products that have already been packaged, further reducing the risk of contamination after sterilization.
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Eco-friendly
Gamma irradiation has very limited environmental impact as high energy gamma rays do not emit carbon and no toxic gases such as Ethylene oxide (EO) are released to the environment or can remain in the product.