Back in May I wrote about the importance of implementing a water treatment program
The implementation and management of a water treatment ensures your employees are safe-guarded from legionella
The subsequent legionnella outbreak in Edinburgh in June and the widely reported outbreak last Tuesday (July 28th) in Stoke-On-Trent has only underlined the importance of establishing an effective water treatment program to ensure minimal risk to employees.
The recession is forcing hard hit companies to make cut backs; this means that maintenance services considered to be a “modest luxury” rather than a necessity are being struck from the “not important list”.
Neglecting to follow a regular water treatment program and not implementing adequate safety procedures are creating the ideal conditions for potentially lethal bacteria to thrive.
One leading Legionnaire’s expert claimed firms were deliberately falsifying safety logs and said the practice could have devastating consequences.
Public health consultant David Harper said outbreak prevention measures had slipped to dangerous levels and were not policed as rigorously as they should be.
He said: ‘Local environmental health officers have been cut back, which means we may see more outbreaks of Legionnaire’s. When times are tight, maintenance is one of the first things to be cut. This goes right across the board – at hospitals, hotels and any facility which has water systems, air-conditioning or cooling towers.
“Businesses are ticking boxes and saying they are doing all these checks, but in reality not all of them are. They are gambling with peoples’ lives.”
The source of the Edinburgh outbreak has yet to be identified but health authorities believe the bacteria found its way into one of 16 cooling towers in the south-west of the city. The towers, thought to be responsible for the worst outbreak of its kind for 30 years, have all now been chemically treated.
The implementation of a regular water treatment program isn’t costly and if managed by the right service provider can be quickly and easily implemented and maintained in a timely manner without a major impact on a company’s bottom line.
For more information and an impartial discussion call Aquatech Services.
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