You know that part of your fridge that always freezes your lettuce? Or the section in your freezer door that leaves your popsicles a little mushy?
Different parts of a food-grade commercial cooling unit might be colder or warmer, depending on how close they are to a wall, or whether the shelves are solid versus a more breathable wire mesh, for example.
Refrigerators used to store vaccines can have these problems too, but the cost of going outside the proper temperature range is more than a head of lettuce. One case study in Australia found that more than half of discarded vaccine doses were the result of mechanical failures in which components of the fridge malfunctioned. The design of the unit can sometimes result in these mechanical failures.
Vaccine fridges and freezers must now meet certain general criteria in order to be certified according to the new voluntary standard.
Credit: Kristen Dill/NIST
Some appliances are marketed specifically as “vaccine” or “medical” refrigerators. However, those terms are not regulated, and manufacturers can apply them to products with vastly different capabilities.
To get around this problem, vaccine providers implement their own sometimes complicated aftermarket engineering controls — for example, adding multiple thermometers so that temperature can be logged in different locations, or adding water bottles to improve temperature stability. But even minor mistakes can damage the stored vaccines.
“If we can improve our vaccine storage equipment, we can go a long way toward reducing the incidence of vaccine waste,” said NIST researcher Michal Chojnacky.
To create a new set of voluntary standards that ..
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