What is the Difference Between an Anteroom and an Ante Area?
In many industries it is an absolute necessity to be able to create barriers between rooms in order to protect those in the building and prevent contamination from either getting into a room, or out of a room. In a hospital this may be to prevent the spread of an infectious disease or protect a patient that is immunocompromised. In a laboratory, it may be to create a clean room where no outside contaminants can spoil an experiment, damage the production of medical grade drugs, or prevent a live virus or bacteria being worked on from getting out.
Many buildings that are designed with “clean rooms” will do this with negative or positive pressure rooms, depending on whether the need is to keep the air flowing in, or air flowing out. These pressure rooms may not be enough, however, as there is often a need to create an additional barrier to ensure the prevention of cross contamination, and these barriers are known as either an anteroom, or an ante area.
Anteroom
If a hard barrier is absolutely necessary in preventing cross contamination from occurring between cleanrooms and corridors, then an anteroom is the best solution possible. Anterooms have hard barriers, such as walls, that separate the cleanroom or isolation room from any nearby rooms or corridors. These anterooms can be built into the building as permanent features or they can be created using temporary, collapsible, and portable containment units that can pop-up outside any appropriate room to create the anteroom necessary for containment.
Anterooms allow those that are entering a protected space to properly equip all the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) in order to protect the integrity of the clean room or isolation room. It also allows those leaving the clean or isolation room to remove their PPE and decontaminate. Most anterooms will have some way to clean hands, face, feet, or any other part of the body within them. This is achieved using a sink and water source, or a full decontamination shower. Anterooms will be set up as negative pressure rooms to ensure anything that gets into an anteroom can’t leave through either entrance, and the air within will be filtered through HEPA filters with a rating of 17+ air purification units.
Ante areas
Ante areas are areas within a room that isolate a portion of the room from the entrance/exit door. Ante areas, instead of being a hard barrier that includes doors and walls from the clean area, use air flow to create the necessary barrier. These are often used within pharmaceutical or other factory settings, where a work area needs to be isolated, but not necessarily require a hard barrier.
Through the use of air circulators, an ante area can be set up by producing a displacement airflow that is unidirectional in order to create an ISO Class 8 area. Often an additional buffer area may be set up between an ante room and work area with an ISO Class 7 area that has an air flow rate of at least 40 feet per minute.
Ante areas are often used as a secondary workspace, and to prepare for entering the buffer zone or isolated work area with the proper equipment ready to go.
Smoke machines are commonly used to verify the air flow in ante areas, buffer zones, and work areas to ensure proper isolation and unidirectional air flow is being achieved. If set up properly it will prevent cross contamination of air particles.
The Difference between an Anteroom and Ante Areas
As mentioned above, the main difference between anterooms and ante areas is the type of barrier that is isolating a work area, or containment room. Anterooms are often used in medical situations where isolating a patient is imperative to prevent the spread of an infectious disease, or to protect them if they are immunocompromised, and a negative/positive pressure room isn’t enough. As well, if PPE needs to be donned or doffed in an isolated room in order for proper decontamination protocols to be adhered to. Ante areas, however, are more often used in work area situations where a hard barrier isn’t necessary, but it’s still very important that air borne particles are prevented from leaving a specific work area.
Both anterooms and ante areas can be set-up with portable gear, if necessary, as long as there is a way for air flow to be controlled and filtered to prevent contaminating nearby corridors. In the case of pandemics, portable containment units are common in hospitals, or anywhere a large number of people are needing to be isolated, where doctors and nurses need to be decontaminated before and after entering a contamination room.