News reports from Dubai suggest a huge Legionella problem bubbling under the surface. The report suggests up to 80% of water samples may be contaminated with Legionella, usually at high concentrations. Given the environmental conditions and until recently a pretty limited awareness of the problem it is perhaps not surprising.
Of course our reseller in Dubai will be delighted to help with supplying test kits for testing Legionella. As the Palintest distributor for the region Blue Gold are well placed to help with all your water testing needs. If you need specialist advice on water hygeine then independent consultant
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who has experience using our tests will also be able to help.
The UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) was today fined £25,000 for breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act, in an incident which resulted in a spill of E. coli O157. Obviously if any organisation should know how to safely handle and dispose of pathogenic bacteria it is the HPA, and in particular its Collindale Laboratory which is an international centre of excellence on pathogenic organisms. It is surprising and disappointing that the incident was neither avoided nor dealt with more effectively when it happened.
Media reports are obviously capitalising on some of the headline grabbing statistics like “100 million to 1 billion infectious doses of the bug”. Rather irrelevant since only 3 people could have been exposed according to the claims of the prosecution. Moreover, given the fact that none of them developed and infection, despite the widely accepted virulence of the organism, suggests that the “exposure” has potentially been exagerated.
However, whilst obviously any spill of bacteria needs to be avoided where possible and cleaned up effectively when it does happen, some of the claims from the prosecution are quite frankly sensationalist: “1 billion organisms” in 100-200 mL of liquid. 1 billion organisms (or even 10 billion as some reports suggest) is actually a pretty small amount, especially in a contaminated waste bin. The spill was on the floor, and therefore presented no immediate risk to the employees, since infection would typically require ingestion or for example exposure through an open cut. Even without the training they should have had, common sense would suggest that if you are handling ANY sort of waste you follow basic hygiene procedures and wash your hands afterwards.
Quite frankly the slip hazard from the spill, and any broken glass was probably a bigger risk than the bacteria itself. Was it in the public interest to bring a prosecution, which resulted in one public department paying fines and court costs of nearly £50,000. The HPA have already implimented stricter controls to prevent recurrence, so presumably the only people benefiting from this were lawyers. Whilst the lawyers were probably correct in “letting” the HPA plead guilty, given the absence of a risk assessment or training, and failures to maintain equipment - I am amazed that they did not seem to “defend” the severity of the incident (or that the HSE/CPS made claims that they showed a “complete lack of understanding of risk”) when actually the HSE have probably over estimated, or at least exagerated the risk to employees and public.
