Sterile swabs in a tube, 100 pcs

Sterile swabs in a tube are single-use wooden sticks with a cotton bud, closed in a polypropylene tube, in a pack of 100. They serve for taking samples and swabs from surfaces and from materials in laboratory work. A general-purpose laboratory product from the Laboratory accessories category.

A swab collects material from a surface: a bench, the inside of a vessel, the housing of an instrument, a package. The tube does two jobs: protecting the bud from contamination before sampling and closing the sample afterwards, for the time it takes to move it on for analysis. The single-use nature of the item is a methodological condition here: one swab per sampling point rules out carrying material between samples. A pack of 100 serves a series of cleanliness checks or routine sampling.

Sterility holds until the unit pack is opened; once opened the swab is no longer sterile, even if it has touched no material. The item is single-use and radiation-sterilised, so it goes through neither autoclaving nor a second use. The wooden stick and the cotton bud bring an organic background of their own, which matters in trace analysis; for such methods the suitability of the material is checked in the manufacturer’s data sheet. Swabs taken are labelled straight away, because the tubes look alike.

• Name and variant: sterile swabs in a tube, single use
• Material: polypropylene tube, wooden stick, cotton bud
• Sterility: radiation-sterilised
• Pack contents: 100 pieces

What does radiation sterilisation mean?

Sterilisation by ionising radiation, carried out on the finished, closed item. It needs no raised temperature, so it neither deforms the tube nor changes the properties of the bud.

How long does a swab stay sterile?

Until the unit pack is opened. After that sterility no longer holds, which is why a swab is taken out immediately before use rather than prepared in advance for a whole series.

Can the swabs be sterilised again?

No. This is a single-use item that does not go through autoclaving; once a sample has been taken, the swab goes to waste under the laboratory’s procedure.