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[Music]
nation have you heard about the rocket
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welcome to scaling up h2o the podcast
where we scale up on knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems my name is
trace blackmore i host this podcast in
nation so many things going on this year
we’re just starting out the year and i
want to make sure that you mark down in
your calendar the things that you can do
this year that are going to help you
think differently that are going to help
you meet new people and help you get
things done and something coming up on
february 9th is the national groundwater
association as hydrology varies widely
across the united states the primary
jurisdiction over groundwater
development rests with the states that
means each state is unique this webinar
series explores the issues encountering
each of the 50 states
one at a time if you want to find out
more about this conference go to our
show notes page and we’ll be sure to
have all that information as well as a
link for you and then something that i
will be at and i hope i see you there
you’ve got two opportunities to come see
me with the association of water
technologies technical training seminars
we’re going to be doing one
in the west will be in seattle
washington february 23rd through 26th
and then again
march 30th through april 2nd we will be
in cleveland ohio i hope to see you
there and if you practice the same type
of water treatment that i do
you cannot afford to miss this this is
just action-packed everything that you
need to know to be a professional water
treater and don’t think if you’ve been
before that you’ve gotten everything out
of it i have been a trainer and i’ve
also been an attendee at this technical
training for years and every single time
i see one of our presenters teach the
audience i learn something new folks you
want to make sure you mark your
calendars for that and make sure you
come up and say hi i would love to meet
you
well before we get to our guest here’s
another thinking on water with james
[Music]
welcome to thinking on water with james
the segment where we don’t give you the
answers we give you the topics and
questions for you to think about drop by
drop
now let’s get to it
in this week’s episode we’re thinking
about being stuck in a rut are you stuck
in a rut in your industrial water
treatment career
are you running the same old pinks and
blues in the same accounts day after day
if so and you feel stuck in a rut what
are you missing by just going through
the motions at each account what other
water treatment parameters should you be
testing what other value-added projects
are just waiting to be done that you
currently cannot see while stuck in a
rut
what equipment needs to be repaired or
replaced
what new things can you learn
how can you take a fresh look at your
accounts testing habits control
equipment daily routine and knowledge
base just to mix things up a little and
make you an even more valuable partner
for your customers
if you feel stuck in a rut take this
next week to think about it and possibly
reach out to someone else within your
company network to help you get out be
sure to follow
tow 22 and hashtag scaling up h2o share
your thoughts on each week’s thinking on
water
i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to
learning more from you
thanks james and if you have gotten a
little behind on thinking on water don’t
worry you can go to our show notes page
and you can catch up we’re still very
young in the year so lots of
opportunities to catch up and we are
going to have a new thinking on water
every single week so make sure
you are thinking on water right along
with james well nation let’s get
straight into our interview
here it is
my lab partner today is michael
lowenstein of q laboratories michael
welcome to the scaling up h2o podcast
hi how are you trace it’s great to be
here
well it’s great to have you here and you
and i missed each other at the recent
awt convention but we are fixing that
right now before we get started all the
cool things that we’re getting ready to
talk about do you mind telling the
scaling up nation a bit about yourself
sure i’m the vice president of
scientific consulting here at q labs in
cincinnati ohio i got my degree in
microbiology from the ohio state
university i have to emphasize to thee
because i’m sure there’s some fellow
buck guys out there and scaling up
nation after getting my degree in
microbiology i went to work for procter
and gamble in corporate r d microbiology
so i have microbiologist by education
and training when i was at png initially
i was doing things like evaluating and
validating rapid methods that was my
first assignment there at png moved on
to working on antimicrobial claims
designing preservative systems and about
halfway through my time there i got more
interested in microcontrol of
manufacturing so i transitioned to
another arm of png’s micro group and i
got to do things like
look at clean design and designing of
water systems and things like that and
designing the monitoring programs around
those water systems so it’s very similar
to what we’re doing here
i got my my feet wet so to speak at png
and purified water systems
after about 10 years at png i got
recruited to qlabs initially to lead the
quality department i was director of
quality for about a year
and then in
december of 2019 i transitioned to my
current role as head of scientific
consulting here and that’s really
leading our training and consulting arm
of our business
and also i’m serving as sort of the
technical lead for anything new that
we’re doing at q labs part of that is
this study that we presented phase one
of at awt just a couple of months ago
and we’ll continue on into phase two and
hopefully we’ll get to talk a little bit
about that
well and that’s why you’re here so many
people came up to me and said i needed
to get you on the scaling up h2o podcast
everybody enjoyed your presentation so
i’m hoping what we could do is maybe
recapture part of your presentation here
for the scaling up h2o audience and
maybe go a little bit beyond that and i
guess if i’m going to ask you a question
around that we’ve got the standard we’ve
got faster methods why do we use some
over the other and what should we be
looking at
yeah so i think there’s this
conception right that there is a gold
standard we call it the gold standard
method and i think we need to look at
what we mean when we save the gold
standard method
practically what we mean is we’re
talking about the iso 11731
the cultural method but in reality then
people say well i’m also following the
cdc method
i’m following not the iso method i’m
following a culture method and they’re
talking about them as if they are all
the same and they’re not all the same
the cdc doesn’t have a method they have
a guidance document the iso cultural
method is consistent with the cdc
guidance document and vice versa
depending on how you read it and then
there are
fairly broad
allowances within the cultural method
itself even if you’re picking one the
iso 11731 let’s take that
there are different augers you can use
there are different pre-treatment steps
you can use it’s relying a lot on
the individual to make choices based on
the information they have about that
water and because of that the quote
unquote gold standard is not all that
standardized to begin with
as for rapid methods i think the reason
we’re not using them more today is that
there’s an outdated conception on what
their capabilities are if you were to
look at the rapid methods for legionella
even five or ten years ago
all of these concerns like does it
distinguish live from dead cells is it
quantitative can it characterize the
legionella that i’m finding five or ten
years ago those concerns were valid
today
the rapid methods at least many of them
can distinguish live from dead cells
they are quantitative and they can
characterize the legionella to some
degree and so i think as we talk about
the capabilities of these more modern
pcr technologies it is a more legitimate
question to say hey should i be using
this as part of my routine legionella
testing strategy as part of my water
management plan
let’s break down some of those things i
want to make sure everybody’s following
the conversation
so i know there’s different ways to do
the culture method
generally
what is that and then generally what is
the rapid method
sure so the cultural method is easier to
talk about as as one thing even though i
i just said there’s really several
different places you could be getting
your information from
really what we’re doing is we’re taking
the water sample and we’re almost always
going to filter that
some volume that the water treater is
going to provide whether that’s you know
250 milliliters for
uh routine monitoring or one liter maybe
in the in the event of a case
investigation
we’re going to filter that and we’re
going to plate it out on a barely
selective auger bcye
with antibiotics in it we played it on
bcye alone and then also on
bcye with some antibiotics because in
addition to legionella being present
there’s all sorts of other
microorganisms in the water that make it
difficult for us to see that there’s
legionella there if we expect that
there’s going to be a lot of background
there or if we’ve already tested that
water and we know that there’s a lot of
background there then we have the option
to do these pre-treatment steps where we
can treat with either acid or heat to
try and knock down that background
bioburn and the non-legionella
microorganisms
there’s some problems with that which
maybe we’ll talk about the rapid methods
on the other hand they’re not looking
for growth
which is a big benefit of them
you know the cultural method of course
we need the organisms organisms to be
culturable they need to grow on the
plate
the rapid method and let’s just take pcr
as the example that we’ll use that we’ll
discuss today since that’s the study
that we presented at awt we’re looking
for the genetic material
specifically the dna of the legionella
or the legionella pneumophila or the
legionella pneumopolis you’re a group
one we’re looking for that genetic
material so we don’t need the organism
to be able to grow so we’re capturing
more of the viable legionella that’s
there
and we are
using an instrument to
count copies of the genes from those
organisms to tell us how much of that
legionella is there so it’s still a
measure of how much legionella is
present it’s just looking for the
genetic material instead of colonies on
a plate
now you mentioned the rapid tests the
qpcr tests of today are much superior
than those of yesteryear speak on that
if you don’t mind yeah so it’s easy for
us to forget in you know this rapid
paced society that pcr has been around
for a long time right this is not a new
technology and
the pcr of yesteryear as it were was
only looking for genetic material right
it was
finding the dna sequences that were
looking for
making copies of them and then you had
to take that genetic material and
either make educated decisions with it
or do some follow-up analysis with it
and it was great for certain purposes
but it left the water treater with these
reasonable questions well okay hold on
genetic material is not alive so if i’m
counting genetic material here i’m going
to count that from both live and dead
cells
that was true with those older
technologies the more modern
technologies they had we’ve found ways
to
discount the genetic material from dead
cells
so now the more modern pcr technologies
are only counting the genetic material
from living cells so now when you get a
positive pcr result you can be sure
that there really is a live legionella
in that water sample
so if we use that method how defendable
is it since so many other companies are
saying the cdc is recommending the
culture method or the iso method we’re
going to follow that where do we stand
as water treaters with that
yeah well i think that’s another
misconception the cdc doesn’t really
make a recommendation typically
particularly around routine water
monitoring they want you to be using a
validated method they want you to be
using a method that you know works these
methods have been validated that’s a
major part of our business is acting as
the independent validation lab on for
these methods on their way to market
many of them don’t pass their validation
but the ones that do
there’s reams and reams of data showing
their validity for routine water
monitoring and if you’re looking at risk
it would tend to go the other way i
never quite understood this when people
talk about well a department of health
is telling me i have to use the culture
method because that’s the only result
they’re going to trust the department of
health is going to tell you and you have
to do whatever they’re going to tell you
to do but to me
you know even the older pcr methods
right if they’re counting genetic
material the risk is that you would have
been counting cells that were dead as
alive in essence you would be
overreacting with a more modern pcr
technology
when i get a positive pcr result i know
that that’s from a live
cell
right and in fact
maybe we’ll get into this a little bit
pcr is much more sensitive than the
cultural method
a pcr result is showing you more of the
legionella that’s present than the
cultural method will
it’s much more sensitive so it puts the
water treater in a more proactive
position rather than reactive at you
know phase one of our study we presented
a little bit of this at awt
showed that at low levels and this is
consistent with many other papers that
have been published in literature at low
levels the culture method is highly
variable
and
is not particularly sensitive so if you
have very low levels of contamination in
your water system and you’re only using
the cultural method very likely you’re
not going to see that if you use a more
sensitive method like pcr you’re going
to see that very low level of legionella
that’s present and you’re going to be
able to decide as the water treater okay
i’m seeing a very low level of
legionella here
what do i want to do maybe right now
it’s very very low and i’m just going to
monitor for now or no i see it trending
up after that you know i saw that
positive result last time and now i’m
using a quantitative pcr method i’m
seeing that number starting to slowly
increase okay right now i’m going to go
do some sort of mild intervention and
see if i can knock that down instead of
having to blitz the system because the
cultural method missed the low level
contamination that was there and now all
of a sudden you have a very very high
level that you have to take some sort of
drastic action against
when we talk about analysis the words
quantitative and qualitative come up can
you help the scaling up nation get a
better grasp on what those are as you
speak of them
sure so any method
can be quantitative
and or qualitative quantitative is
talking about
how much is it give me a number
how much legionella is there
qualitative is talking about some
quality of
the
of the analyte so in the case of
legionella a qualitative question could
be
is legionella there or not
or is it if there is legionella there is
it legionella pneumophila is it
legionella pneumopolis or group one
those are qualitative aspects
of the method
in an ideal world the method would be
both quantitative and qualitative you
know the more modern qpcr
q stands for quantitative pcr polymerase
chain reaction and the more modern qpcr
technologies we are quantifying how much
legionella is there and you know method
c is the one that we refer to at awt we
we compared three pcr methods a b and c
those that were in the audience will
know the method c
was very qualitative as well in that it
counted how much legionella was there
and then characterized that as
legionella species legionella
pneumophila or legionella pneumophilus
zero group one
the cultural method is was designed as a
qualitative measure of legionella
pneumopolis zero group one right and
that makes sense in the context of the
history right at the time there was this
outbreak it was a new organism at the
time all we knew was there was
legionella pneumophila defined as zero
group one it was the only one we knew of
at the time and folks in academia were
saying we’ve got to find a way to be
able to isolate this from water because
it’s causing this new pneumonia called
legionnaires disease and we need to be
able to isolate that from environmental
water samples and so over several
decades the method was tweaked and the
augers were updated and modified to try
and get really good at isolating
legionella pneumophila serogroup one
over the years we have allowed it to
become used in a way that it wasn’t
really designed for right it never
really was designed to be a quantitative
measure it was never really designed to
be accurate and telling us how much
legionella is there it was more is
legionella there or not specifically is
legionella pneumophila syrup group one
there or not
and so it’s not that surprising that
when we’re looking at how accurate it is
in phase one of our study we spiked
water samples in the lab very controlled
with known levels of legionella
and at very low levels we got very very
little recovery even when you’ve got to
much higher levels we still got a
disappointingly low level of recovery
what we say with that is it’s pretty
good at telling us if legionella is
there or not particularly if there’s a
lot of legionella there but at low
levels
it’s not very quantitatively accurate
it’s not very accurate at giving us the
correct answer how much is there
when it comes to sampling how do the two
methods differ
they’re identical so you would still
submit you know whatever your water
management plan says you should be
however what volume of water you should
be sampling most people are using 250
milliliters i think is for their routine
monitoring really the beginning of the
in the lab the beginning the setup of
the methods is the same we’re still
going to take that water and we’re going
to filter it it’s the next step that
changes or in with the cultural method
we’re going to then go plate that out on
augers we’re going to do some
pre-treatment if we have to
with the pcr we’re going to go take it
to dna extraction and running it through
the thermocycler
you mentioned previously that there
could be some potential problems with
the pre-treatment and the cultural
method what are those
yeah so
the
acid and heat those treatment steps are
put into the method if you think you
need them which so if there’s a judgment
call on the part of the analyst so if
you know you got to take that into
account too if you’re an analyst who’s
been doing this for 20 years
you’re probably going to make a better
judgment call than an analyst that’s
been doing this for six months so the
water treater should have that in the
back of their mind but the reason that
those are there is because as we know
water it seems like a simple matrix but
it’s not there’s all sorts of other
microorganisms that are present
and if you’re looking at a plate and i
showed some pictures of these plates at
awt anybody’s interested they can just
contact me and i’m i’m happy to send
those out of just very typical water
place and there’s all sorts of you know
little different colored dots on the
plate which are the different colonies
of non-legionella species we need to try
and see
in there we got to try and reduce as
much of that background as possible
because in the case of a legionella
assay we’re looking for legionella so
the acid in heat is designed to try and
knock down the growth of those
non-legionella species
what happens though
is although it’s designed to target
the non-legionella species it also does
suppress to some degree or other the
growth of legionella itself so
there’s different estimates out there in
literature but upwards of 50 percent or
more have been reported of the initial
legionella population being reduced just
by the pre-treatment
so that’s that’s the same as with the
augers themselves right the we also put
in antibiotics and other things in the
augers to try and suppress the growth of
non-legionella species it’s also
inhibiting the growth of the legionella
itself
over the past year with so many people
getting coven 19 tested and that test
being pcr has anything been learned when
it comes to legionella
that’s a great question
not so much that
things have been learned i think that
it’s raised the awareness of more people
to the existence of pcr and it’s got
people talking about what pcr is that’s
for the general public and so the you
know i think there’s a lot more water
treaters saying well hold on i’m here i
used to hear sort of whispers about pcr
technologies and i wasn’t that
interested but now i’m hearing pcr on
the news every day
there’s guys trying to sell me pcr
assays for legionella i want to know
what those are i want to hear about them
again
on the other side you know i mentioned
that at q labs a big part of our
business is doing these independent lab
validations for these test kit companies
and they have been developing pcr assays
for a long time for all sorts of
different pathogens
and they sort of were running pretty
steady now there’s a whole bunch more
money being thrown into
developing the best fastest most
accurate pcr technology and we’re
hearing both from the big
well-established technology companies as
well as there’s lots of little startups
popping up with their own little ideas
on how to make it better
and we talk to these guys all the time
and they want to know okay what does the
water treater want you know
tell us what the problems are tell us
what their problems are and we will go
to work trying to solve those so there
is a lot more interest and a lot of
money being thrown around as a result i
don’t want to say just as a result but
you know correlation is not necessarily
causation but it’s definitely
having something to do with all of the
work around developing assays for covet
19.
michael is there any reason a water
treater needs to be concerned if they’re
running a water management plan
and they’ve been using the culture
method and now they switch over to pcr
yeah the concern is just that the units
will not be the same and that’s
something that we hear all the time
right they want us the cultural method
is they’re used to seeing units as cfu
per mil and i think everybody through
trainings through awt and elsewhere
folks have gotten very familiar with
okay what is cfu per mil what does that
mean
some folks have said action limits based
on those cfu per ml results pcr is not
going to give you a cfu per ml answer
it’s going to give you a gu per ml
answer or whatever volume you’re testing
genomic units per mill right we’re
counting the copies of that dna target
sequence so it’s still a quantitative
measure it’s telling us how much
legionella is there but it’s a different
unit and people always want to know can
i convert
gu to cfu because if i could i’d be you
know that’d be easy then i’ll just start
using pcr and i’ll just convert it you
can’t really convert it they are
positively correlated as cfu per mil
goes up gu per mil also goes up but it’s
not a one to one correlation
and then also
you know it’s really a positive but i
think it’s something that a water
treater should be aware of
is that it is very likely you’re going
to start seeing
more legionella than you were before so
we see people when they were using the
cultural method and now they’re starting
to use
pcr
pcr is much more sensitive it is very
likely you are going to see
legionella positive samples that didn’t
used to be legionella positive
an achilles heel for a water treater is
they’ll say well i’ll try and implement
pcr by running them side by side and
that doesn’t make any sense you know
because what we talked about before
which is that
it’s very likely that you’ll get a pcr
positive and culture negative that
doesn’t mean that the pcr is wrong it
just means that you can’t get this
legionella to grow for a variety of
reasons lots of people i think
have heard of this viable but not
culturable phenomenon that’s very very
widespread particularly with this
legionella because of all of the
difficulties with getting legionella to
grow in the first place that i mentioned
before
the pcr methods will count those viable
but not culturable cells so it’s really
good you’ll see very low level
legionella and i think you know the
water treater just needs to wrap his
head around speaking this new language
of genomic units per milliliter and
setting his thresholds based on that
it really puts you in a more proactive
position because you’re going to see
low-level legionella contamination and
you’ll be able to monitor that watch it
before it becomes a much bigger problem
in relation to the water management plan
the actual document we now have control
ranges that say between this and this
this is what we’re going to do if it’s
higher than that but lower than this
this is what we’re going to do
if we decide to start using pcr
how do we rewrite those plans
well i think you can do it the same way
right as you would just
set your your thresholds
based on genomic units per milliliter
rather than cfu per mil
part of what we’re trying to do to help
that conversation forward and we talked
again a little bit about this in at awt
is we’re we’re in the middle now of
phase two of our study
and
one of the goals of that study is saying
look there’s not a one for one
comparison we can’t directly convert
between
genomic units per milliliter to see a
few per milliliter but they are
positively correlated and if that trend
is predictable
with a large enough sample size what we
think we might be able to do is say all
right to a certain degree of confidence
maybe a 99 confidence
this genomic unit per milliliter is in
this range of cfu per ml and in that
instance it might help the water treater
make that translation specifically with
the semi-recent cdc update where they
say hey you should be trending at less
than one cfu per mill
okay
what does less than one cfu per mil
translate to in practice with a pcr
method
we’re trying to use the cdc guidance and
try and give the water treater those
kind of threshold saying okay if you get
less than this genomic unit per mil
result it’s very very likely
indicative of the same
intent of less than one cfu per mill
with the cultural method
so today we can go out we can look at
all sorts of different standards to try
to figure out how others are correlating
i get a positive test it’s within this
range this is what i do
is there enough data to create a new
hazard strategy with pcr
sure i mean i think right now the limits
for the cultural method are set
semi-arbitrarily right there’s nothing
magic about less than one cfu per mil
except that it’s what somebody picked
and then you know they said okay well
greater than 10 cfu per ml for potable
water you know you should be looking at
that
there’s nothing magic about greater than
10
i think in the future what you know what
would be great is more frequent testing
and then set statistically based alert
and action limits if you will figure out
for your system what’s normal because if
you’ve got legionella in your system
that’s sort of the first step of trying
to decide what your risk level is for a
system you might not see any legionella
in your system but if you’re going to a
new facility and you’re evaluating it
you’re doing your initial assessment
if there is some low level legionella
there you can see okay what is my gu per
ml result
and take that a series of times you know
okay i have a pretty a pretty standard
statistical baseline
now up one standard deviation i’m you
know making up a potential scenario here
up one standard deviation that’s a
significant change i’m going to do x
when that happens maybe it’s nothing
drastic right maybe it’s just i’m going
to go take another sample or i’m going
to do something else or up to standard
deviations
now there’s something really significant
has happened i need to go treat the
system now right those kind of
thresholds can be set and i think
whether or not you use pcr or culture
there should be some sort of more
scientific rationale behind it you know
cdc and other standards setting these
things they’re they’re doing the best
they can but there’s nothing magic about
these numbers
what are some of the advantages that we
have when we start using the pcr method
because i think the biggest advantage is
it’s just much more sensitive you know
we talk all the time to clients who
they were you know they’re using the
cultural method and it’s negative
negative negative negative 10 to the
fourth 10 to the fifth see a few per 250
mils or whatever their volume was of
legionella they’re like oh my where did
that all come from what happened well
that’s the nature of microbiology you
know but it’s also in large part due to
the method right there’s a lot of viable
but not culturable cells that are there
there’s the inherent variability and
difficulty with culturing legionella to
begin with and the fact that it’s just
not a particularly good quantitative
method that we currently have the
current cultural method by the way there
are folks in in academia and elsewhere
working on
better cultural methods that’s part of
the future as well i’m just talking
about the current cultural method that
we have
so
it puts the water treater in like a keep
beating this dead horse in a very
reactive position right they’ll say
negative negative negative now there’s a
whole bunch what do i do now i have to
go shock the system i have to do
something very drastic
why couldn’t i see that before
well it was a limitation of the method
with pcr it’s much more sensitive you’re
going to see
low low levels of legionella
contamination that’s there the concern
before was well that low level of
contamination was probably from dead
cells right that problem has been solved
when you see that low level of
contamination it’s from live viable
cells that can grow in your system
and you can watch that move over time so
put you in a much more proactive
position as the water treater you’re not
going to be so blindsided by these
results because of the variability of
the cultural method
with a precise accurate sensitive method
like pcr the more modern pcr
technologies you’ll see this low level
you can watch it trend upwards and you
can decide when you need to take action
what about it respects to the length of
how long it takes to get results back
how could i forget the most important
pro and con of this method altogether
right everybody’s aware of the main con
of the cultural method is it takes
forever right now if you’re following
the iso method it if you’re following it
to the letter i should say of the iso
method minimally it takes seven days but
we all know it can take up to two weeks
or more depending on what you see if you
see legionella and you need to do
further characterization of that it
might take longer the pcr technologies
in practice take less than a day
right now we’re going to tell you it
takes a day because we need to receive
your sample and we need to test it and
then we need to go the report needs to
be written and we need to go through
quality review and all of those things
so we’re going to tell you what we what
we say is next day results right we can
tell you the results the next day and so
it’s it’s just night and day right if
you’re going to take a sample especially
you know we talked we’ve been talking a
lot about routine water monitoring but
if you’re doing a potential case
investigation or you’ve got a positive
and now you’re trying to hunt it around
this large campus or something
you don’t want to wait two weeks for
that to know or you want to know
okay is there legionella here or not and
is there a lot of legionella there or
not right is there legionella
pneumophila here or not it gives you a
lot of actionable information overnight
instead of waiting
a week or two or more
to decide
even what the situation is
what are some of the things you’re
working on for part two of your awt
presentation
yeah so phase one was
essentially a validation but a more
in-depth validation we compared three
pcr technologies to each other and to
the cultural method with lab inoculated
samples so we took potable water and
inoculated it with known levels of
different legionella species
in addition to
known levels of background organisms to
try and simulate real life right because
like we said they’re not
it’s not just legionella in these waters
they are competing microorganisms
and we
ran all of those against each other and
like i said what we saw was pcr far
outperformed the cultural method was not
totally surprising
but now we have to go into
phase two
we have to
do that with field samples and this is
what has been done before by others you
know there’s lots of literature
published on this
where folks skip straight to what what
we are calling phase two they’re taking
for granted that the
test kit company has already done the
validation that’s that we sort of
repeated in phase one of our study
and so now actually it’s something i’ll
ask your audience to help us with is you
know we’re a lab we don’t have access to
a lot of these samples so if there’s
anybody in the audience that is
interested in helping us advance this
conversation
and they’re interested in submitting
samples as part of phase two we would
love to have them we are asking as many
people as possible to smith samples
because the larger the data set we can
collect the more
robust statistics we’ll be able to do
and the more we’ll be able to advance
this conversation because if we see the
same patterns in phase two as we saw in
phase one
we’re going to talk not only to awt
but we’re going to talk to ashrae and
ashley and cdc and say hey guys here’s
what we saw
pcr is don’t want to put the cart before
the horse here but it’s more sensitive
it’s more accurate it’s all these things
what else do you need to see
before you’re going to be more vocal in
your standards or in your guidance
documents so that water traders feel
less handcuffed around having to use one
method over the other i think it’s
important to note like you know a lot
we’ve talked to to a lot of these groups
already and they say well we don’t tell
folks what method they have to use right
we don’t you know they can they’re free
to choose what they want
and that’s technically true but then
there’s the reality that
okay but in the in the industry
if you’re not coming out in support of
pcr we’re gonna go with what we’ve all
come up to learn as is the gold standard
because you know i don’t want to stick
my neck out in any kind of way and so we
need folks to send in those then those
samples we’re providing all of the
sampling supplies we’re doing all the
testing at our cost there’s no cost to
the water treater and the samples are
blind coded when they get here so
there’s the water treater won’t see the
results there’s no risk that well
they’re going to get a positive
legionella on pcr and my water
management plan cultural method didn’t
show a positive so i have to deal with
that now there’s no risk of that they’re
all blind coded
and we will advance this conversation
i think we can help you with that i’ll
make sure to have contact information on
our show notes page we’ve got a lot of
listeners over the united states and
also around the world so i think we can
definitely help you with that great well
let’s shift gears just slightly and i’m
going to go to the lightning round
questions so these are the questions
that i ask of all of my guests
so
anybody’s game here so then the point
values are double so here we go
you can now speak to your former self in
your first day as a biologist what
advice would you give
oh boy i think i would tell myself
to start
challenging the status quo right away
it’s something that i do now and i’m
proud of that i do now i’m often
heretical and it doesn’t bother me now
but when i was first starting out you
know i was of the mindset that i think
probably most people are when they’re
first starting out in their careers that
if there’s something that’s been done a
certain way for a long time there’s
probably a really good reason for that
what i found out now is there probably
is a really good reason for that but
maybe that reason doesn’t exist anymore
and i had a mentor at png who
often talked about
you’re the most valuable
to whatever industry you’re in in the
first two to five years you’re in it
because you have what he called alien
eyes and i’m sure it’s not his concept
i’m sure somebody out there is going to
say oh it’s in this book but he said you
have these alien eyes because
you haven’t been indoctrinated into the
standard way of thinking things look
strange to you they don’t look strange
to us anymore because we’ve been doing
this for so long so i think i would tell
myself hey start being heretical now
it’s fine nobody’s going to be upset and
what i tell folks here at q labs when
they’re starting out is if something
looks strange to you or the way
something is done seems odd you’re
probably right so say something
when hollywood hears this podcast
they’re instantly going to make a movie
about your life who do you want to play
michael
oh i guess this is the point where i’m
supposed to make a joke about well i’m
so devastatingly handsome that brad pitt
or somebody should play me but i won’t
do that i won’t be so so hackish about
it i don’t know i guess i’ve never seen
tom hanks give a poor performance so
i’ll and everybody has nothing bad to
say about him so i’ll say tom hanks
although since this is an audio podcast
not a visual podcast i’ll say that
tom hanks will play me when i’m 30 years
older than i am right now
there you go
last question you don’t have the ability
to speak with anybody throughout history
who to be with and why
undoubtedly charles darwin he’s my
scientific hero
everything in biology microbiology
included only makes sense because of the
theory of evolution i named my dog
darwin
after him um what he presented at the
time was i would i just talked a second
ago about being heretical you know
challenging the status quo it was a very
difficult idea to pitch at the time
and now it’s it
we’re looking back nothing else like i
said nothing makes sense in biology
without it love to talk to him michael i
want to thank you for coming on scaling
up h2o this is a topic that people are
just confused about they learned one
method they might have got bad
information about another method they
never revisited that so i think this was
very helpful in getting people to maybe
reform some opinions they previously
made
so they could make some different
decisions or maybe just decisions in the
future
yeah and like i said anybody that wants
to learn more about these feel free to
contact us you know qlaboratories.com i
know you’re going to have my contact
information in the show notes there’s
always going to be a need for the
cultural method that’s never going to go
away
we want the water treater to have these
tools in his toolbox that hey i know
this method can do this and it can’t do
this i know this method is good for this
and it’s not great at that
there’s just other methods around that
we want the water tutor to be armed with
so he knows for this situation this is
the best method available and those are
going to continue to change
well thanks again michael i think we all
learned a lot and we all learned that
there’s a lot to learn out there nation
every time i go to one of the technical
training seminars we are talking about
all the things that you just heard i
think there’s a lot of confusion around
that but there doesn’t have to be
there’s also a lot of good information
we also have so many incredible
professionals
that can help you
understand the testing methods that we
use
and answer your questions in fact they
might even be able to answer some of the
questions you haven’t even thought of
yet i hope that you listen to this
episode and you start researching some
of the things that you want to learn
more about hopefully that means tomorrow
you’re gonna know a little bit more than
you did today and as you know more i
hope you start teaching that to other
people so they can learn right along
with you speaking of that i hope you
also have an idea for me for the next
show
if you do please don’t keep that
information to yourself go to
scalinguph2o.com
and go to our show ideas page or even
better you can leave me a voicemail on
that same page and i will play your
voice your very own voice asking your
question and i will get that answered on
the air folks i will have a brand new
episode for you next week i can’t wait
to talk to you then in the meantime have
a great week folks
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