Handling and measurement
Cold Chain
Last updated
The unbroken run of controlled temperature from where something was made, through packing and shipping, to the fridge it finally sits in. A break is any stretch where the temperature went outside the required range, however brief. Which range applies depends on whether the material is a dry powder or a solution, and for the same product those are often different.
Why it matters here
The leg you cannot inspect is the transit leg, and it is usually the longest and the least controlled. Once a parcel is in your hands all you can observe is the state it arrived in, so how it is stored from that point is the only part of the chain you actually govern.
What it is not
A melted ice pack tells you the temperature at the end and not the peak it reached or how long it stayed there, and a parcel that arrives cold does not prove the chain held either. This is the reverse of the usual assumption: arrival condition is a single reading at one moment, not a record of the journey.
Also called
- cold chain
- cold-chain
- temperature excursion
- cold shipping
- shipped cold
- cold storage chain
Cold chain is standard logistics vocabulary rather than anything specific to this field, used the same way for vaccines, food and blood products. A temperature excursion is the formal term for a break, meaning a period recorded outside the specified range.
Compounds carrying this term
None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.