The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
scaled up nation how many times have you gone in for a dip slide to finish up
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up h2o.com forward slash plate count [Music]
welcome to the scaling up h2o podcast a podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems my name
is trace blackmore i get to host this podcast that you are listening to and thank you very much for doing that and
we are celebrating legionella awareness month no we are not celebrating
legionella bacteria no we are not celebrating legionnaires disease
what we are celebrating is information we are celebrating
awareness month and that is all about making sure that we are armed with
information there are so many people out there that don’t understand legionella
they don’t understand what they need to do about legionella that’s what we’re trying to do this month that’s what we
try to do every august this started a couple years ago when we were in a pandemic and we had no
conventions to go to and everything was canceled of course the big legionella
convention happens in august and because they canceled that we said
we’re going to make august legionella awareness month and that’s what we’ve done for the past few years and i really
think that the scaling up nation has done a great job in getting better information out to our
customers making sure that they have good information so they can make good
decisions and that is what this entire show is going to be about
we’re going to talk about all things legionella we’re going to talk about
questions that you have in the scaling up nation and i have asked everybody in
the scale and up nation what legionella questions do you have and we are going
to answer those questions for you on today’s
show so i hope you’re ready i love doing shows like these because i know i’m answering what you want to hear i do a
pretty good job of guessing what the scaling up nation wants but that’s all it is is a guess until
you tell me exactly what it is you want me to talk about and so many of you have done that
with your questions and that’s what i’m going to be answering today so the first
question is how and when was legionella first discovered well
back in 1976 there was a convention of american
legion folks and these legionnaires that’s where we got the name were at the
belford stratford hotel in philadelphia pennsylvania
and in 1976 there was an outbreak where several
of these legionnaires were getting sick and they were dying and we had no idea what was going on if
you were to look at some of the periodicals back at that time or even
newspaper headlines there was this mysterious fever that was killing our
veterans was it the cold war that wasn’t so cold anymore and now maybe the russians were
being accused of killing our veterans so there was all this speculation about what was going on and then when they did
an investigation they found a particular bacteria that
all these legionella victims these legionnaires had in common and it was
this bacteria and that bacteria was named after the people that unfortunately suffered from
the disease not when it was invented because it’s been around for a long time it was probably when it was first noted
and then given a name so we knew to look for it so that was back in 1976.
another question is people often interchange legionella bacteria and legionella disease
is there a difference what’s the difference how do we know what the difference is so this is the question
that was asked and i hear that all the time and if you were speaking with a legionelogist
somebody that all they do is speak on legionella they would probably grimace
if you did not use these terms correctly now when you don’t use these terms correctly with your customer it’s
confusing because when they don’t get the right terms they’re not able to share the best information with whomever
they need to share that with so i think it’s important that we do understand the terminology so legionella is the actual
name that we gave the bacteria and of course we just heard the story of how it got its name so when you refer to
legionella that is the bacteria itself and there’s all different sarah groups
of this there’s different species of this and of all of them most people agree
that sarah group one legionella pneumophila is the most hazardous when
it comes to a health concern so all that’s about bacteria now let’s talk about
legionnaires disease this is actually pneumonia this is a different name
for the specific pneumonia that you get when you get sick from legionella
bacteria so if you say i’ve got legionella disease in my cooling tower
well no you don’t you might have some legionella bacteria in your cooling tower now will it make somebody sick
well your guess is as good as mine but that’s why we need to make sure we understand it we need to make sure we’re
testing for it we need to make sure that we are controlling it so we can minimize people’s chances of
getting legionnaires disease another question asked what does
legionella look like under a microscope so i’m horrible at describing pictures
so if you go to our show notes page at scalinguph2o.com we will have a picture of legionella but
it is a long cylindrical looking bacteria and it’s it’s really
cool how it reacts to things we’ll have a couple of slides up on our show notes page if you are interested
in legionella bacteria but it is kind of unique looking and i’m
sure if you have seen any sort of publication about legionella you’ve seen
this long rod like looking bacteria that of course is legionella so if you want
to see the actual picture go to our show notes page and we’ll have that for you another question ask trace what
fascinates you about legionella well i i guess the thing that really fascinates
me now is how many people don’t know about it and by now it’s really a choice not to know
about it it’s a fascinating bacteria to just study how it reproduces
uh how it’s susceptible to a lot of different biocides or antibiotics that
that is just fascinating to me but really what’s fascinating is what we’re doing with that and and the fact
that today there are still people that refuse to learn about legionella because
they think that learning about legionella will make them liable
if something ever happens with legionella bacteria in their facility
and i am amazed at that because i think that is just ridiculous ignorance is not
an excuse and i’m sure you’ve probably heard there’s probably a latin term for ignorance is no excuse for not knowing
the law you have to understand that there is legionella bacteria out there and if you
own a building it is your responsibility to make sure that you understand the
water that’s in your building and there’s a potential for legionella bacteria to grow within a building’s
water system and by knowing that there are certain things that you have to do
now some things are mandated some things aren’t depending on where you live you might be under some of those mandates
most of the people within the united states area are not under those mandates for those of you listening to me outside
of the united states you probably do have mandates that force you to test for legionella and if you find legionella
depending on how much legionella bacteria you find you’ve got to do something about it so take it from me
if you have kept the blinders on for this long take them off use this episode as your
excuse to start learning more about legionella heck we got an entire month where you can learn more about
legionella we’re celebrating legionella awareness month and then what are you going to do with that information how
are you going to share that with the people that need to do something with it our customers so they can make better
decisions we’re never going to get rid of legionella it’s always going to be here
but we do need to take care of people that might be susceptible to legionella and specifically when we’re talking to
our building owners we need to make sure that they’re taking liability off the table they’re never going to take
legionella off the table but we can get them to reduce their liability and by
doing that they’ve got a healthier building and that’s going to reduce the risk of somebody getting legionnaires
disease another question asks trace how do you want the public to react when they hear
that there is a legionella outbreak near where they live well a couple of years
ago we experienced this in the downtown atlanta area and i have to say that the people that
work on our website they do a really good job making sure if people put certain keywords in that our website
pops up the news media did that and i got calls from every single news station
to interview as an expert knowing about water treatment and legionella and it was a
very interesting experience because they were less interested i’ll say most were
less interested there was one gentleman that interviewed me and he was all about facts and less about sensation but the
other four networks and i won’t tell you which networks were which but the other four networks was all about
sensationalism and how do we get you to tune in to the next version of this news
because you’re scared and i wouldn’t go there i would not feed them on that i
just let them know the facts and if you actually search around that time if you know of the facility that
i’m talking about you can see my newscast that i did and i’ll just say
that i have a face for podcast so anyway with that i was on those five networks
and the question that they were asking me was should we tell everybody to not
go downtown because they’ll die that’s what people think because they have no idea what legionella is because we as an
industry have been doing a not so great job of letting people know what they need to know and hoping those people let
other people know but that’s what they were telling people that you might want to reconsider your plans if you were
going to downtown atlanta this weekend we of course know that that was not the case
so what do i want the public to know i’d love for us to help educate the public
that there is this bacteria out there called legionella i would love it if people would know that certain people
are more susceptible to it than other people people that have a compromised immune system people that are obviously
older smokers those are all people that could
be susceptible to the legionella bacteria and then develop into legionnaires disease
more so than a younger or healthier person now that being said it doesn’t mean it can’t happen
so with all of that if people understand what legionella is
then they can start asking the places of businesses that they are going to like
the hotels like the resorts what’s your legionella policy with this pool with this spa
and if you live overseas you don’t have to do that because the government’s doing that for you but not so much over
here in the united states so if you’re going to a resort you might want to ask somebody how are you ensuring that this
pool stays healthy at all times what tests are you running and of course we know there’s all sorts of things besides
legionella that can live in water so my hope is that the public demands that the
people that are taking care of the facilities that we and our families are
going into that they take a higher level of education
where they are responsible for knowing this they know what they’re supposed to do about it they’re reporting this
they’re logging this and they’re remediating uh whenever they need to
because they’re following a plan and that’s what i’m hoping that the general public does is ask people what their
plan is and if enough of their patrons ask them about that they will most likely start doing that
most of your larger resort chains are doing that already because they understand that’s something that they
need to do but some aren’t so i hope that answers the question in the way the listener was hoping
another question reads trace most of my customers have not read ashrae’s 188 is
there a simple toolkit that we can use to help educate our customers on what they should be doing when it comes to
legionella bacteria actually yes and i hope everybody out there has read ashrae
188 it’s less than 20 pages so don’t be intimidated by it if you do not have a
copy chances are somebody you know has a copy but i think it will cost you like 10 or
20 bucks it’s not a bad investment for you to read and understand and the first thing you’re going to notice
when you read that is it is not prescriptive at all it does not tell you
what and how to do it basically tells you what you need to identify
so now working with somebody who has experience in making water management
plans i think is key because they can guide you through that process but you’ve got to get the powers that be on
board in order to okay having a team come in having a person come in because
obviously that means that they’re going to have to pay for that expertise so something i love
to give people because it’s got a lot of pictures in it is the cdc tool kit for developing water
management programs to reduce legionella growth and the spread in buildings i
know that’s a mouthful you’ll probably just refer to it as the cdc legionella
tool kit but it is a practical guide to implementing industry standards and
they’ve just recently updated this about a year ago it’s got some information on outbreaks
of legionnaires disease in the united states so you can read
that you also read that it’s going up and is it going up because we have more
outbreaks is it going up because we actually know to test for it well i think the jury’s still out on that but i
truly believe you know we’re using water more and more in ways that we haven’t in
the past and the water and how we’re using it is going in systems that are at
the right temperature for legionella growth and they promote legionella growth and a lot of those systems now
are great dispensers for legionella bacteria and if you don’t know the way
you get legionella bacteria in your body and ultimately for that to produce
legionnaires disease is you have to inhale it so if you get some contaminated water on
your hand no big deal if somebody has legionnaires disease and they cough on you you’re not going to get it that way
so how you get it is you breathe in contaminated water droplets and if you
can think of a cooling tower that’s a pretty cool distribution device
it is up high it is the right temperature there’s a lot of water going
through it and we can spray that over a very large populated area so that’s why
the cooling tower gets a lot of scrutiny now i will tell you with the way that the cooling tower manufacturers are now
building drift elimination devices you’re getting almost zero drift it is
minimal so if you have an older cooling tower 10 plus years old versus a cooling tower today it is night and day
how much contaminated water can actually get out of the cooling tower so
mechanical is always better than chemical so if you’re buying a new cooling tower or your building owner is
buying a new cooling tower don’t just get them to replace the same darn thing that’s on their roof talk to them about
this stuff because they can virtually eliminate any water that’s coming outside of their facility with these new
and improved drift eliminators and that’s prevention that’s doing this
job and that is taking risk off of the table for people getting sick it’s taking their liability
very very well down so it’s good for everybody and you might find it’s the same cost if not cheaper than the
cooling tower that they were trying to replace so just knowing that you can make good suggestions to your customers
anyway back to the toolkit it has all sorts of information that allows your
customer to go through and truly understand what they need to do
in building a water management program and the first thing that you will see i
believe it’s on the second page is it takes you through a questionnaire and it’s it talks about what kind of
facility you have and are people that are in firm
or over 65 are they living there are people actually living there is it a
high rise is there a hot water system how many floors does it have
so then depending on how you answer that you’re then going to answer questions like does your building have a cooling
tower does it have a hot tub is there a decorative fountain is there a centrally
installed mister atomizer air washer or humidifier so if you answer yes to the
top four and then yes to any of the bottom four it’s saying you need a water management plan
and then it takes you through all the terms that you need to know it gives you a brief history on legionella bacteria
and then there’s the diagram it tells you exactly what your responsibility is
and folks it’s not hard so to become compliant there’s really only seven steps and i’m going to read them to you
the first one is establish a water management program team and that is not
just you and the engineer there are more people that need to be brought in there i think it’s great there including the
water treater but the water trader can’t do it all hopefully there’s somebody that
understands infectious disease that can be part of the team hopefully there’s somebody that understands
the human resource element of that facility and when we’re scheduling
things they know when the right time is to do certain things so what are all the different
areas of that facility and who can we pull in that is the expert in each one of those
areas so now instead of just the engineer and the water treater throwing some documents together
we actually have this team coming together and they’re all bringing their own expertise in to make sure that it’s
the best program for that facility and that is what they mean by the word team
number two is describe the building water systems using text and flow diagrams you actually have to diagram
all the water that goes through the building next identify areas where legionella could grow
and spread so these are our hazard points where are these possible locations so we can identify them so we
can later do something about them four is decide where control measures
should be applied and how to monitor them so on each one of these hazard
points we’re then going to decide what the control measures are and what are we going to do to monitor them now it
specifically does not say to test but how else are you going to do that without doing some tests now i’m sure
you’ve got some customers out there that want to test for legionella because they know it’s a good idea but they
don’t want to do it too often they say let’s do it every year folks i’m here to tell you that that is not often enough
now that’s all they want to do you cannot force them to do what they don’t want to do so you got to do what they
want to do but you need to make sure they understand that just once a year is not enough to
establish patterns i think minimum probably every quarter which will allow you all the seasons
will allow you to establish a pattern because that way you know if the program that you’ve designed is actually
working ideally you want to test more frequently so you can really see what’s going on
the facility but i understand it’s expensive to do that so you’ve gotta weigh both options and how much money
can i spend and can i actually get real data from what i’m collecting number
four is establish ways to intervene when control limits are not met quite simply
put when we do not get a test result back how we think it should come back and
still be okay to be in the program how do we get it back to okay
and what we do here is we say between this number and this number we’re going
to do something but if it’s higher than that number but lower than this number we’re going to do something else and you
might have different measures there here’s the key and here’s where i think a lot of people get really nervous about
testing for legionella because if they do find it they have no idea what to do my advice is never test for it unless
you know what you are going to do for it assume it’s going to come back positive
and folks it’s not the end of the world if it comes back positive you just identified that there’s legionella bacteria in the system and now you’ve
got to do something about it but don’t wait to find out you had legionella bacteria in the system and then try to
figure out what to do about it know what you’re going to do about it before you get the result back
a plan is the water treaters friend is the building owner’s friend because you know exactly what to do you’re not
pointing fingers at each other you’ve already worked it out and now that we’re in column c of whatever the condition
came back with with the bacteria count we know exactly what to do because column c
lines out step by step what we are going to do to get back to the control limits
that we want to keep number six is make sure the program is running as designed and is effective so
we wrote it we ran it and we’re continually making sure that as we learn better information
we’re putting that as part of the plan we’re doing the best job we can when we first wrote the plan but this is a living document as we find out more
about the building we’re going to update this plan
seven is document and communicate all of the activities
if you do something you’ve gotta write it down and then there’s a log for everything now that’s not the first time
you’ve heard this on this show if you did something and you did not write it down you can never prove that it
happened well the whole point of having this plan is to make sure you’re minimizing the
growth of legionella in this building but you’ve got a document everything that you did so you can prove that
you’re running the plan folks that is 188 it is not difficult it is not
prescriptive by any means but you can see that’s what a water management plan
should consist of and if you continue to go through the toolkit they have examples of every single section that i
just outlined so i hope that’s helpful we will have a link to the cdc legionella toolkit on our show notes
page so if you want to look at what i am currently looking at go to
scalinguph2o.com and we will have this document ready for you to download
another listener writes in what are some of the best resources out there for listeners who want to learn more about
legionella one of my favorite sites is the spl site special pathogens laboratories janet
stout who you’re going to hear from very shortly this month she has put together
such an amazing i like to call it a treasure trove of legionella knowledge
where at your fingertips in one spot she’s got all of these different studies that you can really learn what you need
to learn about legionella so we’re going to link that on our show notes page and i really think that’s going to allow you
to get a lot of great information and of course as we go through this month we’re going
to be including more and more information on our show notes page here’s another question i think i’ve
already answered this but i want to drive home the point so i’m going to go ahead and read it what do we do if the
thing we are treating test positive for legionella well again we talked about this
previously but i want to underscore that if you test for something
you should expect to find it so don’t be surprised if you do
i think that’s the biggest issue the biggest misunderstanding that we do have
within our industry so maybe that’s my wish for legionella awareness month this
year is that we don’t just arbitrarily test for something and our plan is is we hope
it’s not there we actually have a plan before we test for it and we’re not just testing for it
because it seems like a good idea to test we’re actually testing because a schedule’s telling us to test and then
if something comes back we’ve already diagnosed what ranges
we’re going to do different remediation points on and how we’re going to do that so now it’s just
a series of events that we’ve already figured out so i know that there are people
listening to this podcast and they can’t stand when customers want to test for legionella because oh my goodness they
might find it and now i’ve got to give up my week because i’ve got to spend all this time with them
explaining what they need to do or holding their hand or whatever that is well i’m going to say yeah you’re
probably right so let’s get in front of that and let’s encourage people to test but let’s also encourage them to have
documentation so they can actually do something with that test
by the way uh if you haven’t listened to episode 212 that’s a great episode to help answer that question even more
and i’m amazed as i started pulling notes for this show how many shows we’ve done around
legionella how much content scaling up h2o.com has on legionella so i didn’t
mention this before as far as resources but the scaling up h2o website is really
a great hub bringing together literature and also bringing together
experts so you can learn more about this topic another question reads trace if someone
gets legionnaire’s disease would any antibiotic help get rid of the legionnaires disease
well the answer is no and i believe i am not a biologist and there are far better
people that can answer this question uh but there are only certain antibiotics
and uh the ones that i’m familiar with that do effectively treat
for legionnaires disease or the legionella bacteria is uh levaquinus one
erythromycin is another tetracycline is one so
if that’s helpful um you know by all means you can talk to your doctor they’re going to know a lot more
than that but all things are not created equal when it comes to legionella bacteria it’s got this protective
coating on it that doesn’t allow some of the antibiotics that we use on a regular basis to actually penetrate so that’s
why the antibiotics that i just mentioned are the antibiotics of choice
trace we all know where the term legionella came from what does pneumophila mean i love this question
because it finally allows my latin and greek to shine through so i did take
some of that in high school so legionella we of course know that was named after the legionnaires then when
they found the outbreak and what it was they named the bacteria after the legionnaires
now uh pneumophila and of course we talk about legionello pneumophila serogroup one that’s
probably a term that you heard by the way there’s 58 species there might even be more than that now
of legionella and there’s 15 sarah groups so the most dangerous one the one
that most people are concerned about is legionella pneumophilus sara group one so
pneumo means lungs so it means lung and then phylla means
loving so it’s a lung loving bacteria so there you go when you start learning
some of the words that we have especially in chemistry and biology they define themselves that was a fun
question thanks for asking that one another listener writes in and they want to know what the difference is between
legionnaires disease and pontiac fever actually how they wrote it is they wanted to know what the difference was
between legionella and pontiac fever but we’ve already talked we know that that is not a correct way to say that
legionella is the bacteria that causes legionnaires disease and then there’s also this other thing
called pontiac fever so what’s the difference well the difference is pneumonia so
pontiac fever is the mild flu-like symptoms without pneumonia
that you get from legionella bacteria and this is like a mild flu
most of us have probably had some form of pontiac fever and we didn’t have to
go to the doctor we didn’t need antibiotics and we just had a bad flu we thought for the next couple of days and
then we were fine so now let’s talk about legionellosis which is the same thing as
saying legionnaires disease this is the pneumonia this is
potentially fatal this is something that you have to go to the doctor for this is
something that you might be hospitalized for and unlike what i said before where most of us have probably had pontiac
fever way less than five percent of the population will ever get
this so those are the differences of legionnaires disease and pontiac fever
and i’ll go in a little bit further what are some of the symptoms of legionnaires
disease well it could be high fever chills muscle pain headache a cough
diarrhea vomiting confusion delirium so these are a couple
of things that you might get if you get legionnaires disease now that sounds a little familiar with
covet so there’s a lot of confusion going on around that right now
it’s just a really interesting world to live in but this is all about awareness and the more we know the better we can
educate other people the better that we can do for ourselves and our companies so there you go that’s the difference
between legionnaires disease and pontiac fever another listener writes in trace every
time we hear about legionnaires disease we always hear about a cooling tower is
that the only place where legionella bacteria can live and the answer is no in fact if you were
to go to the cdc webpage you will see that more than 80
of the cases that are reported for legionnaires disease are found in domestic water so
that’s the drinking water within the systems so that leaves 20 percent with
cooling towers so follow-up question that this listener might ask is well why
do we put so much attention on the cooling tower well i think there’s a couple of reasons one
the disease was actually located when the belford stratford hotel it originated in the cooling tower so
forever and always that’s going to be associated with legionnaires disease
but it’s also a great distribution system like i said it’s on the very top of the hotel or the building and it is
broadcasting over a wide range of a heavily populated area so it’s a great
distribution device so a lot of people can get sick when it’s on the top of a
cooling tower where if it’s in a water fountain or a more contained area normally it’s just people within that
specific facility so it’s important to know where legionella bacteria can grow in the
entire facility and that’s when you do that water management plan they want you to diagram all the water that’s going
through the system and that includes utility water which is the cooling tower
and other utilities that would be in the building and then of course the domestic
water making sure that all of those areas are staying safe
trace i hear a lot about low legs why is that important when it comes to legionella
well low flow or no flow areas could be called low legs
or dead legs that’s how i’ve heard it this listener says low legs i’ve read
that the definition for a dead leg and also low leg i guess that’s a term too
is that uh three inches is considered a
dead leg so if let’s say you’ve got a t coming out of some pipe and it goes into
a three inch nipple well guess what that’s a dead leg and what that means is that flow is stopped within that little
dead leg of nipple or our pipe which means we’re not getting the
cleaning effect of the water that’s going through the piping and as water flows it’s
taking all the bio material that’s growing in the pipe with it so it can be
flushed out well if we don’t give the water a place to flow
to and buy a side to freely get to well now it can grow
uncontrolled and then as it’s growing it grows so much it can actually start
sloughing off and getting in the mainstream of water and creating problems downstream so that’s why
dead legs are such an issue and that’s why you want to identify all those in your water management program
now a follow-up question as i can hear in my head this person asking well how the heck do you identify everything you
can’t see behind walls and you’re right you can’t you got to do your best due diligence that you can do
and i suggest you look at piping and i will be the first to tell you that as
built drawings are never as built it’s as we drew them and then your guess is
as good as ours how we actually built the darn thing but you can only be the best that you can be with the material
that you have so try your best you might notice that everything is joined
together in the same way on every floor and maybe a couple floors are exposed
but a couple of other floors are behind drywall well you can make the assumption
that those systems are built in the same way that the lower floors were and i
would probably document that that i am not able to see this area so the assumption was made
that it was built just like this other area and that’s the thing if you don’t know
document that you don’t know if you’re taking some assumptions document what those assumptions are
that way as you learn new information and we we learned when i went through the plan steps that as we’re required to
learn new information and as we learn that information we then update the plan making the plan get better and better
and better another listener writes in they want to know what are some of the agencies that we should be familiar with if we’re
looking into legionella well i think a great resource is the awt
the association of water technologies they’ve got a position paper a white paper on legionella specifically for the
equipment that we treat so if you haven’t read that i would definitely read that information of course ashrae
which is the american society of heating refrigeration and air conditioning engineers they’re the ones that came up
with the 188 protocol we’ve already talked today about the cdc the centers for disease control and
prevention located right here in my hometown of atlanta georgia
cms is the centers for medicaid and medicare services they recently came out with some
documents on how they want people to perform at water management plans to
ensure that they are properly doing what they need to do so that might be something
that you need to become familiar with another organization is cti which is the cooling technology institute
of course the epa the environmental protection agency ashy which is the
american society for healthcare engineers so if you are working with
hospitals medical office buildings this is a group that you probably want to be familiar with also if you’re in that
area the joint commission is another group that you’re going to be forced to
be familiar with because they’re going to have a whole bunch of things that they’re going to make sure that you do
at a hospital the national safety foundation of course i’m sure there are probably hundreds of
others out there the big ones i would say that if you go to awt the association of water
technologies read that position paper of course ashrae the 188 cdc the tool
kit and then cti the cooling technology institute they have a neat white paper as well so
that might get you started with some of the other organizations out there there’s so many good questions people
wrote in i really want to thank everybody for that so uh here’s the last one that i’m going to answer
and it is about ice and ice machines and you have probably
been asked to test ice machines in a facility where people are wondering if
they have legionella bacteria in there and where does that come from so and that’s what this question is around and
it is about a case where somebody got legionella from ice chips
now i said earlier and i think it’s widely known that in order to get legionella bacteria into your body where
it can start to produce the legionnaires disease that is through inhaling water droplets
well there is a case where somebody in the hospital i believe was after a surgery
they were eating ice chips and they were contaminated ice chips and they aspirated contaminated water from these
ice chips so i believe that’s what the question and i didn’t really read the question because i don’t think i can do
it justice because it was about a five paragraph question that was the gist of it i think that’s where it’s coming from
and we know that that can happen so a lot of hospitals are now testing their ice machines i
believe that that was actually ended in a death where that gentleman did not survive
so a lot of people are taking that seriously so in addition to the cooling
tower uh here’s some other things that you’re probably going to be asked to
maybe test to make sure that there’s not legionella or excessive legionella bacteria growing in these so
hot and cold water storage tanks water heaters water hammer arresters
expansion tanks water filters electronic faucets aerators in faucets
faucet flow restrictors shower heads hoses non-stream aerosolizing generating
humidifiers equipment that’s not used very often such as eye wash stations or chemical
showers these are something that affects us so we’re now at risk for these things that aren’t used but once every five
years and then of course ice machines that we just talked about so i hope answering these
questions gives you some more information about the topic of
legionella we’ve been all over the map as far as equipment you know we treat cooling towers boilers closed loops
waste water but now we’re being asked about ice machines so
knowing that information you’re able to give better information you’re able to
help your clients you’re able to guide them the bottom line is they’re the ones that have to make the decision a lot of
times they want you to tell them what they need to do now you can be an
advocate and you can do that by giving them all of the information but all of the regulations are very clear the owner
is the one that’s responsible for that so don’t tell them hey buddy that’s your responsibility you deal with it i don’t
think anybody out there in the scaling up nation would say that but do tell them what they need to know
and give them some tools like ashrae’s 188 or the cdc
toolkit so they can better arm themselves to make better decisions speaking of arming ourselves so we can
make better decisions here’s our friend james mcdonald [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 jar testing what kind of equipment do you use
how do you make down and dose coagulants and polymers what is the math involved in making down
and dosing how long do you stir each test at what speed should each test be
stirred does your standard procedure match the actual conditions of the system
if not how might you adjust your procedure do you use round jars or square
are there guidelines of where to start with certain types of waters how would you teach someone else how to
do a jar test take this week to think about jar testing and what you may still need to
learn be sure to follow hashtag tow22 and hashtag scalinguph2o share your
thoughts on each week’s thinking on water i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to learning more from you
well thank you james and nation i hope you will join me each and every friday
this month where we’re going to be learning more about legionella i’ll give you a sneak preview of the people we are
going to have on this month so next week you’re going to hear from legionelogist of course legionella expert
janet stout where she’s going to tell us some new things going on in the world of
legionella bacteria and then we’re going to hear from one of my good friends russell baskin
russell owns a company up in the new york state area and because of that he
had to change the way he ran his company overnight we’re going to hear all about
that in the upcoming weeks so join me in celebrating legionella awareness month
by learning about legionella being more aware of what the information we have at our fingertips
out there and reading that and being able to get that information to our
customers it’s my hope that we all stay healthy and we all pass along the right information to help everyone do the same
have a great week folks i’ll see you next friday [Music]
one of the things i hear so often about the rising tide mastermind is about how
well the members in the rising tide mastermind listen to other people folks
we are programmed to give quick advice even if we don’t have all the
information through the issue solving track that we practice in the rising tide mastermind you will learn how to
ask better questions so you can give better advice and that will shorten the road for
whatever issue you’re trying to solve to find out more go to scaling up
h2o.com forward slash mastermind