ISO 14644 Standards were first formed from the US Federal Standard 209E Airborne Particulate Cleanliness Classes in Cleanrooms and Clean Zones.
As cleanrooms became more sophisticated, the need for wider ranging standards was recognized. The need for a single standard for cleanroom classification and testing
was long felt. This lead to the formation of ISO Technical Committee 209. The goal of ISO TC 209 was the "standardization of equipment, facilities, and operational methods for cleanrooms and associated controlled environments."
The first document of the ISO 14644 series was published in 1999 (ISO
14644-1). In 2000, ISO 14644-2 was published, which began the process of FED-STD-209E being canceled. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) released a Notice of Cancellation for FED-STD-209E, Airborne Particulate Cleanliness Classes in Cleanrooms and Clean Zones, on November 29, 2001 and FED-STD-209E was then superseded by ISO 14644-1 and ISO 14644-2.
In December 2010, revisions of ISO 14644-1 and -2 were released as Draft International Standards. In September 2014, a second edition of revisions to ISO 14644-1 and -2 were released as Draft International Standards. The second round of Draft International Standards addressed and incorporated changes based on more than 250 comments received by ISO/TC 209 WG 1 during the initial DIS voting period in 2010. The revised DIS standards, balloted in 2014, better defined classification of air cleanliness in cleanrooms and associated controlled environments exclusively in terms of concentration of airborne particles of a designed size range. These documents were both approved in the second DIS stage, with far fewer technical comments than the previously balloted versions. Final Draft International Standards of both documents were release in August 2015 and were approved as International Standards on October 27, 2015. The standards adopted as identical national standards in the United States (ANS/IEST/ISO Standards) and are now available for purchase through IEST.