Thanks for the reply. To be clear, this is for APC surface testing. We already have an ATP program in place.
The baseline APC surface is being done in conjunction with APC air plates. We are testing before, during, and after operation. The purpose is to get some baseline data to better understand potential spikes.
I’m not sure why I was asked to do APC surface before the sanitizer is applied.
Hi dfwdilemma, I'm so sorry, my brain read ATP and I was definitely confused.
Presumably you would collect baseline microbial counts prior to applying sanitizer in order to determine how effective the sanitizer is at destroying organisms. E.g. if you wanted to validated a 3 log reduction in normal use then you need to swab before use, then swab after sanitizing to determine what the reduction was.
Unfortunately, this won't likely provide meaningful data as the number of organisms present after washing/rinsing are hopefully already pretty low, and quantitative micro has huge margins of error and relies on a bunch of datapoints to be meaningful, or at minimum very high loads so that results are visible and not all near the limit of detection.
There could be some benefit in seeing what your surface microbial load looks like throughout your produciton/sanitation cycle. But again I would be hesitant to have that be any sort of validation data unless you have a lot of it.