Acceptable Environmental Monitoring swab storage/testing temperatures

Hello all,

I have a question regarding acceptable temperature limits for EM swab storage/testing upon arrival at the laboratory. This is for a USDA/FDA dual inspection plant. Upon my research, it seems as though the common industry standard is typically between (0-8 degrees C). However, I noticed some literature stating 15 degrees C is acceptable depending on the duration of storage/transportation to the laboratory. Currently all of our swabs are sent out in coolers with ice packs, and arrive to our 3rd party laboratory within 4 hours.

Please advise!

I'm not expert enough on the various AOAC methodologies, so there could be differing acceptable temperatures.  But 15C/59F seems really dang high even for your 4-hour travel time.  At my old spice plant where everything was processed ambient, we would refrigerate our EM swabs for a couple of hours to pre-cool them before throwing them in an ice chest for the local lab to pick up.

Generally speaking, I just go by what my lab says because at the end of the day they'll refuse to test and discard samples that arrive outside of the temp range they say is acceptable.  Wouldn't dream of fighting with my lab because of a white paper I found online.

2-8 C