Decontamination

Decontamination is a process of elimination or destruction of contaminants or pollutants or harmful agents, or hazardous materials present in or on an object or area. Contaminants can be toxins, poisons, chemicals, radioactive substances, and microbes or infectious components. Decontamination processes make equipment, devices, foodstuff, and the environment safe to protect us and our surroundings. Cleaning (physical removal of contaminants including dust, soil, and waste products using water purification, dry and ultrasonic cleaning), Disinfection (utilization of heat or chemicals, ie, disinfectants to remove or reduce the number of viable microbes to a limit not harmful to health but not able to remove bacterial spores), Sterilization (purifies a material by removing viable microbes including bacterial spores and viruses) are the key processes of decontamination. These processes facilitate decontaminating humans, soil, groundwater, and the environment.

Decontamination is required to prevent hospital-acquired infection by cleaning and sterilizing from hospital premises to devices and equipment in primary and secondary care settings. Food-borne diseases can be avoided by decontaminating foodstuffs using ultraviolet light, drying, and heating, pasteurization to kill microbes, depending upon the nature of the food. Thermal processing, introduced by Lazzaro Spallanzani in 1768, prevents food spoilage by decontaminating microbes. Pasteurization, introduced by Louis Pasteur in 1863, is specially used to decontaminate wine, milk, or fruit juice at mild temperature, usually to less than 100OC. John Tyndall is the pioneer of decontaminating foodstuffs by introducing the Tydallization process during the nineteenth century. [AHM Nurun Nabi]