Use of chemicals and fungicides on wood. Important pharma manufacturer affair
Sunday January 31st, 2010
Many of the consumers of a well known type of fills pills were affected by serious sicknesses; consequently the famous USA pharmaceutical Company had to recollect a big quantity of such product from International markets
The pharma-Company discovered that the pills had been contaminated by tri-bromo-anisole and by tri-bromo-phenol whose presence was afterwards detected on pallets used for the storage of the pills boxes.
In other words the timber used for the pallets had been treated with chemicals against mould and fungi but the chemical compound had decayed and developed tri-bromo-anisole and by tri-bromo-phenol. In order to reassure our Clients involved in pharma and food branches who have got worried by this news, we wish to illustrate our procedures:
- Even in observance of Epal pallets Specifications, we have never provisioned raw material previously treated for chemical preservation, as well as we have never bought it from Countries of South America despite its cheap price, because overthere the use of chemical agents for timber preservation is a common habit.
- Recently, theUIC has officially withdrawn the allowance to use “Sinesto AS” as wood-fungicide, but even before that we had NEVER bought raw material treated with this chemical. Besides the ordinary quality controls, we systematically also check the eventual presence of this chemical. We use a special Cobalti Rhodanium reagent kit that makes wood become blue-colored when it was treated with Sinesto.
- To protect our raw material we have been using for more than 20 only heat treatment by drying kilns and often we have encouraged as well our suppliers to furnish with these such equipments (often have also financed them for this purpose).
- In addition to the traditional drying, for those Clients who aim to a true sanitization of pallets, we are able to provide a special additional microwave treatment.
In 2006 we projected and built a microwave system (350 kwatt power) provided with methane burner for hot air ventilation (1.200.000 kcalh power).
The microwaves operate on the molecular dipole of water in the core of wood. Thanks to this process together with the high temperature of the chamber, all biotic agents are killed, as well as the anisoles mentioned at the beginning.
Concluding, we wish to stress one’s attention on the circumstance that this MW process is much more efficacious for a full sanitization than the ISPM 15 FAO Treatment (56°C for 30 minutes) whose goal is to fight some xilofages only such as the Pine wood Nematode (Bursaphelencus Xylophilus) and the Citrus Long-horned Beetle(Anoplophora chinensis), and not all pests as it happens in the MW process.