"Protecting the Animal Environment and Collected
Environmental Data "   

  Eric Edstrom
Edstrom Industries, Inc.

Contents:  Environment - Protect Animals - Set Alarms - Validate

Environment - Two Related Needs

Facility managers are concerned about animal room environments for two reasons:
   •  Protecting the animals and research requires:
      -  Environmental monitoring
      -  Alarming
   •  Supporting compliance requires:
      -  Environmental Monitoring
      -  Data collection

What Environmental Parameters to Monitor?

There are many parameters to monitor, the choice of which depends upon the species being housed. But here is a good starting point.

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Lights
• Airflow
• Differential Pressure
• Door locks
• Blowers on vent racks

What can go wrong?

The reason monitoring has to be done is because things can go wrong. For instance, the list above.

• HVAC system malfunction
• Outdoor climate changes
• Mistakes -- door propped open
• Oversights -- Daylight Savings
• Mechanical failure – light timers
• Mistakes -- lights left on/off
• Unauthorized people in the rooms

Protecting Animals and Research

The most important thing in protecting animals and research is to monitor the biggest threats. For instance if room temperatures rise dramatically because an HVAC thermostat gets stuck, animals will die.

If the rooms are monitored for temperature problems, staff can take corrective action to resolve the problem. The mistake many facilities make is that they invest in the monitoring systems, but have not planned what the actions are in the event of alarms.

• Decide what parameters are critical
• Monitor them 24/7
• Alarm System
• People take action

Set Alarm Points

Monitoring systems are designed to provide alarming, but also risk being a system that “cries wolf.” For instance, say the temperature just slips above the high alarm setpoint for one minute, then goes back down in the acceptable range. What you do not want is an alarm that wakes an supervisor at 2am who then drives to the facility and finds that nothing is wrong. In the future, real alarms will be ignored.


Alarm escalation, provides for an alarm delay, requiring the temperature to stay above the high setpoint for a longer duration. A high critical setpoint is the point at which an alarm sounds immediately, since it represents a more severe and urgent situation.

• Understand alarm escalation features
  – Temp 78°F triggers high alarm
  –  Temp 84°F triggers high critical

Who should receive alarms?

Take care to figure out what kinds of alarms are possible and what the reaction to them will be. Also, make sure the right people are in the systems alarm notification list.

Larger facilities can be expected to have more alarms, so more people may need to be on the lists and be trained to respond.

• Alarm recipient list may need to vary
   – Onsite call center
   – On call staff members

• Monitoring only T,H,L
   – 30 rooms = 90 potential simultaneous alarms
   – 50 rooms = 150 potential simultaneous alarms

“Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!”

It is key to prevent “crying wolf” systems. This can be done using the escalation features of the system and other features that suspend alarming due to activities in the room, like cleaning.

Finally, turn off alarming for non-critical rooms, or those rooms not in use.

• No crying wolf systems
• Eliminating false or nuisance alarms
   – Alarm delays
   – Room clean mode
   – Turn off alarming for non-critical rooms

Validate the configuration of alarms

When setpoints are programmed, they need to be based upon the protocols and standards in place. There must be procedures for doing this configuration.

• 30 rooms could have over 960 configuration points
   – T,H,L, door locks, airflow, diff. pressure in each room
   – High and low, escalation parameters
• Alarm delays
• Alarm actions need to be defined
• Call schedules
• SOPs for configuration

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