if you ever asked yourself where those come from

I work at a medical device manufacturer and pretty much everything we make gets put on pallets at the end of each week to get shipped off to a company that specializes in sterilization using ethylene oxide. At our facility we package everything into tyvek pouches which are breathable so the ethylene oxide can permeate the package and those pouches are put into cardboard boxes and then onto pallets. From what I understand, they just put the entire pallets, cardboard boxes and all into this vacuum chamber where they suck out all the air and then flood the chamber with ethylene oxide to sterilize. It's not an instant process either, I know it sits in the chamber for several hours/days and often we get things double sterilized (2x ETO). There's probably just not enough of these specialized facility that are capable of suddenly dealing with the influx from, not to mention the cost.

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