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:

  1. 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.
  1. Recently, theUIC has officially withdrawn the allowance to use  “Sinesto AS”  as wood-fungicide,  but  even before that we had NEVER bought raw material treated with this chemical.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.
  1. 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).
  1. 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.