Legionella: Is your business managing the risk?

 

Legionella bacteria may be present in stored or circulated water – typically supplied to showers and taps, but also storage tanks, calorifiers and air conditioning systems. It is the inhalation of fine water droplets or spray containing this bacteria which causes Legionnaires’ disease.  

Who is at risk?

Risk of contracting the disease increases with age and also for anyone with reduced immunity. Many buildings are affected – typically hotels (the source of the first known outbreak) and leisure facilities. Outbreaks have also been traced to restaurant air conditioning outlets, rooftop water tanks in office blocks and factory cooling towers.

Why is water temperature important?

To comply with legislation, all businesses are required – regardless of size or type – to undertake a risk assessment and then manage and maintain risk reduction procedures. Legionella bacteria multiplies in tepid water, so a well-established method of reducing risk in many cases is to maintain an effective water temperature testing regime. 

The HSE’s ACOP L8 recommends that hot water in a building should be stored above 60°C and distributed above 50°C (55°C for care homes), and cold water distributed below 20°C. Water outlets – especially sentinel points – must be routinely monitored to ensure safe temperatures. 

Large FM companies are responsible for rigorous estate-wide testing regimes. Other businesses use independent water specialists to undertake a full legionella risk assessment periodically, but carry out routine temperature spot checks in-house. Easy-to-use equipment, requiring minimal training is a must. 

Solutions

TME’s MM2008 Legionella thermometer with in-built timer is manufactured with a 1 and 2 minute countdown facility to speed up and simplify the timed temperature tests recommended for taps and showers.

Jackie Winn, director, J W Safety Solutions, works closely with local authorities on legionella risk control: “Having a built-in timer is a fantastic idea for water testing – much better than trying to hold a thermometer, a timer, a clipboard and a pen all at the same time!” 

TME also pioneered the first dual purpose surface/immersion probe – its KS01-S offers the fastest tests for running water, pipe surface and calorifiers, by eliminating the need to swap between different probes. And its CLEGK2 Kit – which combines the MM2008 and KS01-S - is one of the most efficient methods for testing both running water and pipe surfaces. Chas Thompson, operations manager, Freeston Water, has many years’ experience in the field. “It’s a great piece of kit – especially for businesses who do their own testing because the thermometer timer buttons makes it easier to learn and the dual purpose probe makes the job much faster.” 

Hard to reach temperature points

Many buildings have boxed-in TMVs, high-level water storage tanks and calorifier feed and return pipes. These problem test points can be more labour intensive requiring ‘working at height’ procedures to be followed or the building and dismantling of cosmetic panels. TME’s TCWALLPORT system uses low cost fine wire temperature sensors connected to wall-mounted thermocouple monitoring points. This system combined with a high accuracy thermometer such as the MM2008 produces an instant temperature reading from up to 20m with no loss of accuracy.

Paperless recording 

TME believes paperless recording of temperature tests provides peace of mind, being less vulnerable to human error and more cost effective over time. TME has introduced handheld logging thermometers enabling thousands of locations and temperatures to be identified, logged, stored and downloaded to PC/PDA using open source software. The company’s MM7000/05 and MM7100/7105 barcode scanning thermometers feature programmable alarms with a choice of either Bluetooth communication or USB connection. 

Continuous monitoring

The latest addition to TME’s specialist legionella temperature range is a customised solution combining continuous monitoring with handheld spot checks, providing the best of both worlds and keeping paperless records in one place. Users choose from a combination of fixed sensors and handheld probes enabling continuous monitoring of water flow and temperature within pipework as well as handheld running water tests. All results are streamed to a single database using a cloud-based wireless monitoring with no installed software required.