It has been quiet on the newswires for a while with not much to report on Legionella outbreaks. There are, as always, other water borne pathogens causing concern around the world but again nothing which seems to actually be causing significant new disease outbreaks right now. It is likely that Legionella news will not break through the media frenzy drummed up by the Swine Flu story, and so Legionella will remain off the global radar for a few more weeks.

Anyone who has visited public toilets in London, probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they may be contaminated with bacteria. However Legionnaires’ disease may not be the sort of infection they were worried about, but Legionella has been detected by First Great Western at Ealing Broadway Station.

As now seems to be standard in such circumstances the official statement said that it “posed no risk to our customers”. I am sure that internally the company did recognise that Legionella bacteria did indeed represent a risk, albeit, possibly quite small in this circumstance. That would explain why the toilets were closed for deep cleaning.

Regular visitors will have noticed we have added some shopping features to the site. There are a few bugs to iron out, and until we do the “checkout” features will remain disabled. We’ll get it all working very soon - but until we do we are of course happy to take your orders by phone or fax - and will offer our special web prices to anyone who does. Apologies to anyone who’s browsing experience is being disrupted by our testing and tweaking - we’ll keep it to a minimum and try to do any major work at the weekend..