Pharmaceuticals

　　The sterilization for pharmaceuticals is one important link in production process, which is directly associated with quality of pharmaceuticals and the health, even life security of users.

　　In the production of pharmaceuticals, people have adopted many sterilization methods, but regrettably, there must be some defects in these methods: for instance, although pressure steam sterilization has strong penetrating power, it will reduce many volatile oils in pharmaceuticals; the ultraviolet irradiation has bad deep sterilization for pharmaceuticals; microwave or infrared sterilization has bad effect for pharmaceuticals with low moisture; and in chemical sterilization some chemicals (such as ethylene oxide or like) are apt to reaction with vitamin or streptomycin in some pharmaceuticals, and it will have chemical residues.

　　However, the irradiation sterilization will overcome all defects in the sterilization methods above. Lots of scientific researches prove that the irradiation sterilization is suitable for most of Chinese patent medicines and part of western medicines, in particular to power and Chinese patent medicine which can not endure high temperature and have volatile ingredients.