581 Badge Formaldehyde Background Level

581 Badge Formaldehyde Background Level

When a Lot of 581 badges is manufactured, a representative number of badges are tested for background levels of formaldehyde and other significant interferences.  For formaldehyde background, the average and standard deviation of the background levels must pass established criteria before the lot is approved for customer use.  The average value of the formaldehyde background is listed below.  Laboratories that use and resell our badges to their customers can use the values below to blank correct their results or just verify their lab is getting the same level of background.

All media that collects formaldehyde has some background formaldehyde.  Since Assay Technology manufactures our media inside of glove boxes filled with Nitrogen gas, the background levels are very low and consistent.

581 Badge Formaldehyde Background Level
Lot Expiration Date Initial Background Level, ug 6 Month Shelf Life Background Level, ug
10C17 10/31/2018 0.108 0.135
1B18 1/31/2019 0.0895 0.0810
7H18 7/31/2019 0.110 0.107
11D18 11/30/2019 0.072 0.112
4J19 4/30/2020 0.109 0.107
9A19 9/31/2020 0.103 0.123
11H19 11/30/2020 0.123 0.126
4L20 4/30/2021 0.118 0.115
12B20 12/31/2021 0.146 0.206
4B21 4/30/2022 0.144 0.120
10F21 10/31/2022 0.122 0.122
4D22 04/30/2023 0.115 0.129
8B22 08/31/2023 0.096 0.110
10J22 10/31/2023 0.109 0.107
3S23 03/31/2024 0.099 0.101
5B23 05/31/2024 0.128 0.099
6B23 06/30/2024 0.181 0.178
7M23 07/31/2024 0.163 0.162
12F23 12/31/2024 0.140
2C24 02/28/2025 0.140
Note 1:  The lot number format is Month/Letter/Year.  So Lot 1C11 was produced in January 2011.
Note 2: For each lot, Assay Technology tests a set of aldehyde monitors to assure the level of formaldehyde is within acceptance limits.   A typical background level formaldehyde on the 581 badge is about 0.1 ug.  For an 8 hour monitoring , that is 0.0014 ppm or about 0.2% of the PEL.  The background of formaldehyde for a specific lot is subtracted from all samples tested at AT Labs.