Making cleaning better: Sinner's Circle and beyond

BY DR TIM SANDLE | 20 September 2023

Introduction

The process of cleaning and disinfection is not down to one factor. To ensure efficiency (as required by standards like EU GMP Annex 1), key elements need to be considered both holistically, as well as in terms of their interactions. For a process like ‘clean-in-place’ (CIP), concepts like the Sinner Circle represent this approach clearly. This approach can also be applied to manual cleaning and the practices of cleanroom disinfection and cleaning. In recent years, the approach has been enhanced by accounting for other variables that affect cleaning and disinfection efficacy. 

This article reviews this approach and presents the information in a way that could be used as a training aid for personnel tasked with cleaning and disinfection in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors.

Sinner's Circle

During the late 1950s, a German chemist named Dr Herbert Sinner developed a model for the effective cleaning of materials through washing (1). Here the cleaning process is represented as a circle with four sectors. These are:

• Chemistry
• Mechanical
• Temperature
• Time