GMP, or Good Manufacturing Practice, means the proper storage, documentation, and inspection of any product that is manufactured, ranging from food and beverages of all kinds all the way to medical supplies, cosmetic products, and more. Often, chemicals and medicine can be very harmful if they are not used, stored, or manufactured correctly, so GMP quality assurance is vital to making sure that consumers and item handlers alike are safe when exposed to these items. This can be especially true in such cases as radioactive items or powerful drugs or medicine that could cause great harm if ingested. Hazardous materials such as toxic waste, flammable gas or oil, dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide), and more should be handled with care for GMP quality assurance, and GMP storage should be done right and GMP standards must be met so that everything runs smoothly. What are some items that should be stored with GMP quality assurance, and what should be done in case of an emergency?

What to Store with GMP Quality Assurance

Chemicals and medicine often call for GMP quality assurance, as these products may give off dangerous fumes if improperly stored or manufactured, and they can cause a problem in the case of leaks or spills. Around the world, the United States is the single biggest manufacturer of chemicals, and including the pharmaceutical sector, the United States employs 810,000 people at various chemical companies from coast to coast. Similarly, the United States makes up 45% of the entire world’s global pharmaceutical market, and this means that vast amounts of prescription drugs and chemicals should be carefully transported, manufactured, and stored, and professionals should always follow safety standards and carry out proper inspections to make sure that there are no problems. Often, such chemicals may constitute hazardous materials, and agencies such as OSHA and others will require workers to complete the proper training to handle or transport such materials, which includes truck drivers. Workers may wear eye protection such as goggles or respirators when working with powerful chemicals, and GMP quality assurance means inspecting cargo to make sure that there are no issues such as leaks or spills.

GMP quality assurance may also extend to radioactive or toxic materials used for industry, such as nuclear power plant fuel rods and others, and this will certainly require protective gear and certification to work around such materials. Proper warning labels should be applied to such materials, and the nuclear hazard sign has become well-known.

Other pieces of hardware aside from storage containers should also be built well and inspected to make sure that they are functioning well, such as fume hoods. A laboratory’s fume hood, for example, should be checked once per year by an independent certifier so that correct air flow is maintained, and this is to meet Cal/OSHA criteria about safety. In fact, for GMP quality assurance purposes, one in five labs is about to replace its fume hoods and one in three such replacements are being done due to the hoods’ old age, according to a recent survey. Clean room standards, too, must be maintained for the pharmaceutical industry. Maintaining and regulating the humidity of such rooms is vital, and tolerances of plus or minus 1% are possible due to recent advances in the technology involved.

Industrial gases can also be subject to GMP quality assurance checks. Gases in industrial settings come in canisters and should be extremely pure, but after use, a canister may start to get impurities in it, or it may have been contaminated since the start. If a workplace’s worker suspect purity issues, they can buy canisters of what is called calibration gas, a high-quality gas canister whose contents and the purity are well known and clearly labeled. The other gas canisters’ contents can be checked against it to find purity issues. Similarly, if a gas readout device at the workplace might be giving off inaccurate readings, such calibration gas can be purchased and used to diagnose a problem with the gas detector at the work site. Otherwise, the workplace might suffer from the use of impure gas or a detector that cannot even tell the difference, and new canisters of work gas can be ordered if there was a problem.