Controlled Environment Entry

The door is where most contamination comes in, and also where stopping it is cheapest. An orderly gowning protocol does more for the area than any amount of cleaning afterwards.

A gowning protocol is a sequence, not a list of items, and the order matters. What is highest goes first — hair and facial hair — so that whatever sheds falls onto clothing that is still going to be covered. Then the body, then footwear, and hands last. Reversing that order forces steps to be repeated.

The sticky mat closes the sequence at floor level: it retains what footwear drags in over the last few metres. Its top layer is peeled off once saturated, because a saturated mat stops being a barrier and becomes a source.

All entry equipment is single-use for the same reason: a reusable item means also controlling its laundering, storage and service life, and every one of those steps is a chance to reintroduce what was just removed.

What it takes

• Top-down gowning sequence, hands last
• Sticky mat on the final stretch before the entrance
• Peel the mat's layer once it saturates
• Disposable equipment, so contamination is not reintroduced between shifts